Keep church and state separate: Secular Party

Secular Party of Australia candidate for Melbourne Ports Gregory Storer says he’s sick of politicians giving lip service to GLBT issues.

The openly gay candidate told Southern Star he is disappointed with the response by some candidates and MPs tiptoeing around gay rights issues, such as gay marriage.

“I think it’s people not prepared to listen to their constituents and for a loss of a couple of votes, they’re prepared to put our rights on the back foot just to keep themselves in power,” Storer said.

“I think we need to challenge that.”

While contesting its second federal election, the Secular Party already has a strong policy platform on GLBT rights, supporting same-sex marriage, greater anti-homophobia education, recognition of gay families and lesbian access to IVF.

The party also supports recommendations in the Australian Human Rights Commission Sex Files report to advance transgender rights.

Storer — who is running for Parliament for the first time — said he sees gay marriage and removing the right of religious groups to discriminate on the basis of sexuality as key issues facing the gay community.

“I have a passion about ensuring religion and politics are kept separate and see a lot of pandering especially to Christianity and don’t see that as a good thing.

“I think religious intolerance is something that needs to be properly addressed. We need to remove the discrimination against gay people by churches, that could be in hiring gay teachers or the other loopholes in the [Anti-] Discrimination Act.

“They need to get tightened up.”

Storer said he believes religion has unfairly taken hold of issues such as gay marriage.

“The only reason I can see that governments continually stop access to marriage is because of the Christian lobby and even in the seat of Melbourne Ports, the Jewish connection to that as well.

“At the end of the day we should be allowed to decide what to do with our lives. If we want to get married, we should get married and I think that’s a fundamental right.

“Whether or not you agree with marriage is not important. What is important is that we should have the ability and the right to, just like everyone else in the country.”