One pupil made a request on behalf of at least eight of his Anglican Church Grammar School mates wanting to take their partners to the June 19 event - but was told that the policy of taking only female dates had never been challenged.
"(Dr Cummins) said to me, 'if you start a political movement this is going to get blown out of proportion. If you go quietly about this and if you don't cause us too much trouble, we will just quietly change the rules so they're allowed and no-one gets hurt'," the student said.
Peter Jensen, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, has publicly backed the school's decision saying that homosexuality in the view of the church is wrong.
"People do send their children to our schools - they send them there on the understanding that we understand from the teaching of the Bible that the expression of same-sex attraction... is morally wrong," Dr Jensen was quoted as saying to Macquarie radio, according to The Australian on Tuesday.
Laurie Scandrett, chief executive of the Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation, says he supports the decision undertaken by the school although there is no umbrella "edict" among its schools banning gay students to take their partners to school dances. But it "would not be encouraged," he told The Sydney Morning Herald.
The news has sparked an intense public debate in newspapers and the Internet after a local newspaper ran a headline, "School bans gay couples" over the weekend.
Noting that the debate on the Internet has evolved into an issue of public attitudes towards homosexuality, media studies associate professor Karen Brooks highlighted the amount of "vitriol and negativity" found in some of the online blogs as a cause for concern.
"Why is it we are so often protected from racial abuse and gender abuse, but when it comes to comments about homosexuality, it is like the filter collapses and this hatred is allowed to come to the fore?" the Southern Cross University associate professor was quoted as saying in the Sunshine Coast Daily.
Meanwhile in Victoria, the State Government has said that state schools are expected to adhere to equal opportunity legislation and thus must allow gay students to bring their partners to formals and functions.
The students at Churchie, as the school is commonly known, involved say they may boycott their senior formal but will not lodge a complaint with Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Commission.
Under Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Act, private schools are exempt only for the purpose of enrolling students from one gender or religious background. Any other forms of discrimination on the basis of sexuality is unlawful and applies to both public and private schools.
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it's a LIE!!
The bible never says anything moral about same-sex attraction!
I me, this is not discrimination at all. Why want to go to a boring place like that ???. I would have simply give the prom a miss and head to the local gay bar.
What's the fuss ???
When one has to pander to the charities and moods of others for one's own basic right to existence equality, that is when discrimination starts. So wat if an establishment is private, post #10? Does that give it more right to discriminate? If going by your logic, then private entities can commit unjust acts above the law.
Geez. Now do u all see why things are the way they are? Tat's coz many vultures prefer to wait for leftovers instead. If Stonewall were in the likes of similar passive bystanders, go figure.
At their ages, these schoolboys are role models for their courage and conviction. I salute them. Dun think the school can take credit for these virtues, which are almost non existent in societies these days.
God have mercy!
Some people here seems to be so free as to run around looking for "discrimnations" or shouting"discrimination everywhere he goes. Put it this way, you discriminate against me just because I disagree with you.... get it ???
Being militant about things will not solve problems but further divide the human race. Why head that way ??
My logic is simple, if we are not welcome, then we go to a place where we are welcome. If I set up a private school, and insist that everyone should wear pink, then everyone should wear pink, for afterall, it is a private establishment and if you are not happy about it, then don't be here. The world can't change overnight ........ we are making baby steps and it is good. No need to have bloodshed.
NSW government is going to educate students to use "partner" instead of "husband and wife", the suggestion is not welcomed according to polling. People concern about it poses a threat to foundation of family value.
I wonder why we are way behind Spain....a Catholic country!
Maybe the top doG can do something.
Could be subtle as long as it's effective.
The Govt and the people.
IMHO, I think the people always hold more power.
The Govt rules but they fear the people power.
They cant please everybody so they have to come up things like -
"Meanwhile in Victoria, the State Government has said that state schools are expected to adhere to equal opportunity legislation and thus must allow gay students to bring their partners to formals and functions...Under Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Act, private schools are exempt only for the purpose of enrolling students from one gender or religious background. Any other forms of discrimination on the basis of sexuality is unlawful and applies to both public and private schools."
If this is a slow but steady process, to take effect, over all states, imagine the positive impact Australia would have on the world.
Kudos to these boys. They could have chosen to go the 'quiet way'. Some may say they're stupid, why do u even bother to fight 'the system'. Well, they stood up for what they believe in. They just got to be prepare for the onslaught from the oppositions, that's all. Nonetheless, they sure raise awareness bar for everyone who comes to know about this, regardless gay, straight or alien. :)
There is really no resolution/recipe in diffusing HATE. It just requires of psychological buffing to encourage acceptance and tolerance. It applies to anything one can develop feelings for and eventually, it is up to the individual to embrace it.
Full marks to this guy for actually wanting to take his partner to his school formal while so many people still fail to be proud of who they are.
This autobiography relates the challenge of growing up gay in a small Rhode Island town. Fricke knows he is different early on in his life and begins having homosexual relations at the age of six. As he matures, he is the object of unrelenting prejudice. He has trouble making and keeping friends and feels rejected by society because of what he is. Eventually, he meets other young homosexuals as well as straight friends who help him gain self-confidence and feel acceptance. When he is a senior in high school, he stands up for himself, as well as for human and gay rights, when he invites another gay male to the prom as his date. Initially, Fricke was not granted permission from his principal, so he took his case to court in order to receive consent. Through this very public experience, Fricke learned that people do respect and support him, but there will always be those that will never accept homosexuality.
---I don't see how this qualifies as 'banning gay couples'. There needs to be a little more in the way of explanation in this article
"Churchie headmaster Jonathan Hensman said none of the students had approached him directly, but a staff member had raised the issue on their behalf.
"The senior dinner dance is an opportunity for our young men to escort a young woman in a formal school environment," Mr Hensman said.
"We don't intend to change our practice. As well as being a social occasion, it's an education forum and to that end the school decides what is appropriate behaviour and what is not."
"Mr Hensman said if any of Churchie's seniors approached him formally, he would consider taking the request to the school council."
Anyone who thinks that the boys should just " do it quietly" is mistaken. There are forces constantly trying to put us back in the closet. We have every right to be here and so we should alway stand up for our rights whenever it is threatened.
party in Singapore banned again this year?
Please do not mix things up. WE MUSLIMS are good people. your statement is very misleading. Be carefull when you generalise using "They".
It is totally tasteless to drag other religions into this.
The existence of the "exemption" (but: "immunity from prosecution" in my view is a better phrase; bring closer to home the prospect of the eventual legal chop) in itself is the scandal -not the fact that a sad set of timewarped "educationalists" try their level best to foster and perpetuate hatred within the community.
The people in charge of that school betray the community with illegal and morally indefensible home-brewed rules.
The community should make them pay the price, literally, and terminate whatever public subsidy, direct or indirect, these schools get --yes, private schools do get public funds too, and tax breaks, and services in kind. It may be the case that religious schools are "exempt". Government spending and policies are not. Hatemongers should be hounded out of public spending.
Nothing is more important to ending the immorality of homophobia then people discovering that quite a few people they know are gay, and that these gay people are ordinary decent folks who deserve to be treated equally by our societies. Of course, it is always easy to create despisement and even hatred of a minority if people don't know the people in that minority face to face.
As for the fundamentalist bible believers, a look through history shows how the bibles of societies have been used to foment or support most wars which are nothing but mass murders.9/11 here in the USA was one example. The thousand years of the dark ages is another, as is the million or so women burned alive by the church as witches, and the tens of thousands who were murdered by the inquisition for daring to say that the pope was wrong, the earth wasn't flat, etc. And then there was the Catholic Church which here in the USA for decades hid and protected their pedophile priests, realizing that their religion is a house of cards, and once people begin to think clearly about it, enormous change will come or the church will rightfully die. And then there was WWII, by a maniac who used religious hatred of the Jews to gain power and kill 50 million before he was destroyed.
The churches ramblings against gay people show a total moral bankruptcy, for any religion whose God has to be strengthened and promulgated via the degredation of a minority is a disgrace to God and everything Jesus Life on Earth was meant to be.
Taking into context the inevitable hostility these boys face, how many of us here can boast of having half their guts & moral courage, esp. when chickening out- or stooping to the level of
passive-aggression- is the far easier option?
Kudos to them for their efforts & hopefully we all can draw some lessons from their positivity & the resilence of the human spirit in face of adversity- in our very own lifes. =)
In all great movements for social change there have been some X-tians for progress but many against it. It was the same in the struggle for women's votes or the abolition of slavery.
X-tians seem happy to pick and choose from the old testament based on little more than their prejudices at the time. For instance eating non-scaled fish is explicitly forbidden by the bible, yet X-tians seem more than happy to tuck into a big plate of shrimp. Stoning adulteress to death is encouraged by the bible, but fortunately has been left of the agenda of modern Xtians, as has owning slaves or committing genocide against the "enemies of the lord".
In time perhaps the X-tians will give up their hatred of the GLBT community. Till then we have to oppose their bigotry, and at least in Australia take some comfort from the fact that their numbers are dwindling as their brand of magic hold less hold on the popular imagination.
"[T]he absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts, or on a problematic and non-scriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures. I suspect that a fuller exploration of the sexual metaphors of the Bible will have more to teach us about a theology and ethics of sexual desire than will the flat citation of isolated texts".
but on a serious note its time for a class action against all schools in australia who dare to discriminate against gay people
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