Woke foster care agency loses fight to discriminate against Christians

Forces of anti-Christian bigotry suffered a set-back before Christmas but will it last?

A Perth couple won their legal battle against a foster care agency that discriminated against them because of their mainstream religious beliefs.

The decision of the Western Australian State Administrative Tribunal was handed down on December 23 after a five-year ordeal for Byron and Keira Hordyk.

Was the timing of this rare win for family values designed to minimise public scrutiny?

The foster care agency, Wanslea Family Services, was ordered to pay $6000 in damages and to delete any negative file notes about the Hordyks.

According to Wanslea, the Hordyk’s “crime” was their unwillingness to affirm a child’s same-sex relationship.

In 2017, while applying to be foster parents, Wanslea required the Hordyks to respond to a case study that asked how they would respond if their foster child was caught kissing someone of the same gender at school.

Here’s what’s recorded in the tribunal decision (page 9):

“…in the event that a foster child who had been placed in their care was found kissing a child of the same sex at school, they would tell the child that they were loved but that the behaviour was sinful and needed to be resisted. The Hordyks said they would have to end the placement of a foster child who continued to behave in that way. They qualified that statement by saying that they would not terminate the placement immediately but could not foster that child in the long term.”

The Hordyks told Wanslea they believed the seventh commandment, part of the Bible’s famous 10 commandments, which stipulated monogamous man-woman marriage was the appropriate place for sexual expression.

For saying they would lovingly disagree with a child’s homosexual relationship and gently re-settle the child over time with other foster care parents, the Hordyks were deemed not competent to foster and their application terminated.

The Human Rights Law Alliance, which specialises in discrimination cases against Christians, argued before the tribunal that WA law protecting religion had been breached.

Wanslea tried to argue that the Hordyk’s beliefs were not based on religion.

The tribunal agreed with HRLA and the Hordyks.

But this was not before Wanslea argued that the Hordyk’s views could cause “harm” to a potential foster child (p. 61).

It is clear from Wanslea’s attitude and woke culture more broadly that failure to celebrate all forms of LGBTIQA+ expression in people, regardless of age, is not to be tolerated.

The Hordyks were fortunate that WA anti-discrimination law specifically outlawed discrimination based on religion and that the tribunal applied the law without capitulating to woke pressure.

LGBTIQA+ political activists have been working for decades to establish a hierarchy of rights where their rights trump all others, including and especially the rights of religious people.

Having lost the Hordyk case, how long before activists pressure politicians, who have shown an all-too-ready willingness to capitulate, to close this legal loophole?

This weakness of politicians is why Family First is contesting elections everywhere. Our parliaments must be populated with people of courage and conviction.