In Church schools, parents find a strong ethos of personal care for students. Strong leadership and even charisma make these schools a school of life, a family, a community nurturing Christian values. Careful selection of staff is vital to protecting this ethos.
Do the pending ‘equality’ laws endanger this? The bill prohibits the selection of employees on the basis of their religion but allows an exception for teachers of a religion in a ‘religious’ school. But this exception stops if the teacher has other, bigger, school roles or if it is a government school.
Admittedly, the bill does allow schools to expect teachers to teach according to the school’s ethos. More generally, religions are allowed to reserve religious services, such as sacraments, on their criteria.
The bill aims to stop discrimination not only on the basis of religion but of sex, gender, sexual orientation, political opinion and other factors. It covers not only the selection of teachers but basically all areas of employment, offering service, and many others.
Malta will gain when promotions cannot be withheld on the basis of political opinion, or services on basis of sexual orientation. However, decisions about where to draw the line on exceptions can be a very delicate matter, leaving wide discretion.
This is most serious as these laws have big teeth indeed! The bill overrules all other Maltese laws, the European Convention on Human Rights included, excepting only the constitution. The board can dish out crippling fines of even €500 a day and will consider every accused as guilty till proven innocent. If you disagree, it might take you five years of expensive international litigation to get redress!
How will this affect school ethos?
The law should say a clear yes to selecting teachers according to their promoting the values of the school
Obviously, it is not discrimination but a right to expect a teacher of religion, in Muslim, Catholic or – equally! – government schools, to be a committed adherent to that religion in every case. The bill does not accept this!
On the other hand, Church schools will have no problem, with their inclusive ethos, to accept, as they already do, teachers from various religions and various genders and sexual orientations. No teachers I know were sacked for not being devout or religious in their personal life.
But the law should say a clear yes to selecting teachers according to their promoting the values of the school. It is against the right to free expression, religious liberty and the right to free association to deny schools such a right, that other associations have in relation to their aims. Excluding a teacher because he is straight or gay is bad; but excluding a straight or gay teacher because he preaches sexual infidelity is not discrimination on sexual orientation, but the right to choose the education of one’s children.
The bill appears to respect this. But the bill also says the guiding commission will embrace ‘good practices’ followed internationally. Would this include sacking a Catholic chaplain for not supporting a Catholic who wanted to marry another man? Will that include approving a care order to take children away because their parents absented them from school not to attend sex education that prematurely sexualised the children?
The protection against such extreme practices seems to be there, but how much will it still be open to interpretation? Religious associations have found it threateningly unpredictable.
The previous Minister for Equality had laughed heartily as she boasted, at an international conference, how ‘equality’ has been used as a Trojan Horse. She said, “You know, electoral programmes: they didn’t realise because we just put in ‘equality’’, as she explained how they pushed in reforms that they knew the people opposed.
What can we now expect from the present government, promising rule of law and democracy as never before?
Let parents and citizens speak up now to their MPs and long remain vigilant! Remove dangerous vagueness, restrict crippling punishments to pre-defined grave offences; stop taking suspicion as proof; allow conscientious objection; stop discriminating against religious symbols.
And much will depend on who runs the show.
The bill has beautiful words as to how truly representative, wise and pluralistic is to be the selection of commissioner, commission and consultative commission. But in the end, it is the prime minister and his party that choose them all, if they decide to. A bad choice can produce a right inquisition. A good choice would be of people who are charismatic and understanding, who build on the best of Maltese civic and spiritual maturity, whose power is not to be underestimated, given genuine lead and backing.
Charles Pace, specialist in social policy