More attention needed

As LGBT rights and gay marriage is promoting all over the country, people start to focus on equality in areas and aspects that had not been noticed before. In Josephine Tovey, Sydney Morning Herald’s reportor’s article Push to end expulsion of gay students, she reports that recently, independent MP for Sydney Alex Greenwich has noticed that although under the Anti-discrimination Act of NSW, it is lawful for public schools educational institutions to discriminate against or expel students on the basis of homosexuality, transgender status and other traits, the Act plays a trick to make private schools and colleges excluded from it. Unfortunately, there are already several cases of students being expelled due to their sexual orientation, especially in faith-based schools. Therefore Mr Greenwich is trying to introduce the private member's bill to the NSW Parliament to remove the exemptions.

 

Although the right of education is one of the basic human right and should be ignored in any situation at any time, the intersectionality of being homosexual as well as students make the situation much more complex as more sociological factors such as religion have huge impact of school’s decision making. In my opinion, however, what is fundamental in human rights should stay fundamental despite the change of other factor or the situation of intersectionality.  It is part of social justice, as Grant and Gibson write “Protection and enactment of fundamental human rights are at the core of these twenty-first century calls for social justice” (2013) Therefore, the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act should be changed to remove exemption. As there is a lack of relational justice under the current version of the Act. This area of relational social justice is often ignored by most people as relational justice, unlike distributional justice is not as obvious for people to see and moreover, the issues related to homosexuality is a relatively new area for social justice.

 

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that under current version of the Act, LGBT students in private schools cannot be well protected, but is the situation better for students in public school? I think it is doubtful as it is common for LGBT students being bullying by other student. Moreover, I am still a bit confused about if saying something like ‘that’s so gay’ is offensive. If it is, then most of students and even some teacher need to be aware of crossing the boundary.

 

Even if the Act is changed in the future, it is still important for us to be aware of the issue of relational just in LGBT rights as this new area of social justice needs us to pay more attention.

 

References:

 

Tovey, J. (2013). Push to end expulsion of gay students. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved on 8/10/2013 from: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/push-to-end-expulsion-of-gay-students-20130827-2soet.html#ixzz2heCsZbjw

Grant. C. A., & Gibson. M. L. (2013). “The path of social justice”: A Human Rights History of Social Justice Education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 46 (1), 81-99