Andrew Thorburn had to choose between Essendon and his church – their values cannot be reconciled
“My personal Christian faith is not tolerated or permitted in the public square.”
With those words, Andrew Thorburn ended his one-day tenure as chief executive of Essendon Football Club and lit the fuse on yet another religious freedom conflagration.
Before we all take up our fixed positions on one side or the other of the stake at which Thorburn is now burning, it would be sensible to understand exactly what is, to risk the metaphor, at stake.
This is best framed by two questions: has Thorburn suffered an infringement of his legal rights? Alternatively, is he the victim of an unconscionable unfairness, regardless of law?
The legal position is staked out (sorry) by two competing principles: conflict of interest and discrimination. The factual issue is that Thorburn was intending to hold two roles simultaneously: Essendon CEO and chairman of City on a Hill, a Christian church organisation.
City on a Hill holds and promotes some beliefs that are, these days, not mainstream. They include that abortion is murder and homosexuality is a sin. The church’s website includes an article from 2013 titled “Surviving Same Sex Attraction as a Christian”.
Essendon, by contrast, is (according to a statement by its own chair, Dave Barham) “committed to providing an inclusive, diverse and a safe club, where everyone is welcome and respected”.
Barham said that the Essendon board wasn’t aware of these conflicting value sets when it appointed Thorburn but, when the media began pointing them out, it told him he couldn’t perform both roles. Thorburn chose to resign.
Victorian law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees on the basis of lawful religious beliefs. Whether Thorburn personally views homosexuality as a sin is unclear, but certainly that belief is not an unlawful one to hold. If he was effectively forced out, he may have a case. Probably, however, a moot point, since he is unlikely to pursue any legal claim.
Thorburn is prosecuting his case in the court of public opinion, via a long public statement in which he argued that “within hours of my appointment being announced, the media and leaders of our community had spoken. They made it clear that my Christian faith and my association with a Church are unacceptable in our culture if you wish to hold a leadership position in society.”
All of the boxes of the culture wars are ticked: Thorburn’s central claim is that, for what he believes, he has been cancelled by the mob. Essendon’s culpability, logically, is for succumbing to the sight of the pitchforks and throwing its own principles of tolerance out the window along with Thorburn’s martyred body.
Thorburn said he has “always promoted and lived an inclusive, diverse, respectful and supportive workplace – where people are welcomed regardless of their culture, religious beliefs and sexual orientation”.
The question he poses, therefore, is whether this is another “Folau” situation; the active exclusion of people of faith, whose beliefs may be unfashionable and hurtful but are sincerely held, from full participation in society because the public square is now dominated by rabid insistence on conformity with “progressive” values and any divergence is not tolerated.
I think not. As with Israel Folau, the particular beliefs for which Thorburn stands are by definition intolerant. It is a peculiar feature of religious faith that it projects outwards, determining not just what individuals believe for themselves but what others may and may not physically be and do. LGBTQI + people are told, by religions to which they do not belong, that they do not legitimately exist in the form of their choice. Women are told what they may do with their own bodies.
That is problematic, in terms not of modern social mores but basic and eternal human dignity. It sets up a conflict that is intractable, which is exactly where Essendon found itself stuck. The point is not that Thorburn personally believes he can run a football club that openly welcomes people which the church he leads treats as an abomination, because he would never impose his own views on anyone else.
The point is that he sought simultaneously to be the public spokesperson for two sets of values that are directly opposed and cannot be reconciled.
Thorburn’s statement was, simply, wrong. Nobody said he cannot hold a leadership position in society. He would, for example, be not even slightly out of place in the leadership ranks of the Liberal party. He could be prime minister or governor general, on recent precedents.
He just couldn’t be CEO of a football club that thinks being LGBTQI+ is something to be celebrated, not survived. No harm, no foul.
• Michael Bradley is managing partner of Marque Lawyers, a Sydney law firm. He specialises in media and public law, and is a widely published author on social justice issues