[Content warning: homophobia; violence; suicidal ideation]

I realised I was same-gender attracted on my first day at a religious boarding school in Brisbane in the 1990s. It was terrible timing, and meant my high school experience there was a living hell.

This was a school that was proud to publish its homophobia in its school rules – homosexuality would not be tolerated because it was not in accordance with god’s will.

It was abundantly clear that ‘coming out’ as gay was simply not an option. To do so would likely be met with punishment. And so I didn’t.

At its worst, I vividly recall a school pastor giving a sermon to a chapel full of 600-or-so year 11 and 12 students, talking about how a child from his former parish had come to see him ‘struggling with confusion’ about who he was. He said the child ultimately committed suicide – before observing this was not the worst thing he could have done.

For many queer kids sitting there that day, like me, the sermon’s underlying message was obvious: much better to be dead than gay.

The school’s overall approach to LGBTQ issues oscillated between that kind of explicit prejudice on one hand, and silence and invisibility on the other (including failing to provide any relevant sex education, which was particularly dangerous at a time when HIV/AIDS was still killing thousands).

Looking back, I think this ‘invisibilisation’ was actually more detrimental in terms of its impact on me, because it meant suffering in silence, completely alone, with the people who were supposed to be looking after me offering no solace.

The climate created by the school’s silence on sexual orientation and gender identity also allowed anti-LGBTQ bigotry to flourish amongst its students.

While I cannot be certain homophobia was a conscious motivator in the multiple physical assaults I experienced in Year 11 (which went unpunished by the school), the fact I was ‘different’ in some fundamental way, left cowered by fear into being withdrawn and isolated, rendered me vulnerable.

I can be more confident homophobia was behind the choice by Year 11 students to bestow on me the ‘Big fat poof’ award at the end of Year 12, in front of both peers and boarding school staff, with the latter doing nothing to respond to it.

Not even to check if I was okay.

That was almost three decades ago, so why I am writing about it now?

Because, with Commonwealth Parliament yet again debating the issue of protections for LGBTQ students and teachers – and yet again looking like letting the LGBTQ community down – there’s two points I want people, and especially politicians, to know.

First, that religious school homophobia, biphobia and transphobia causes serious harm. For me, that meant thinking about committing suicide every single day from the start of Term 2 in Year 8, until the final term of Year 12. Sometimes upwards of twenty times a day.

That is no way for a child to live. And definitely no way to learn, or to grow.

Nor does it suddenly end when the students who are the victims of this prejudice leave the school gates for the final time.

Trust me, I know. Those terrible five years have impacted me for much, much longer than that again.

The hurt and the harm I suffered was a major contributing factor to the lost decade that was my twenties, culminating in my thankfully unsuccessful attempt at suicide around my 29^th birthday, more than a decade post-school.

Life got better when I met partner just after I turned 30, but I am not ashamed to admit that even now the trauma from my schooling is something I have discussed with my psychologist multiple times over the past 12 months.

And so, if the Labor Government chooses to break their clear election promise to protect LGBTQ students in religious schools, it won’t just be a betrayal of the students currently enrolled in homophobic, biphobic and transphobic schools – who, as highlighted by Equality Australia’s ‘Dismissed, Denied and Demeaned’ report released on Monday, continue to be vulnerable now.

It will be a betrayal of their futures too, with the impacts continuing to be felt in the 2030s, 40s and 50s.

Second, while it may not initially seem like it, my story is one of hope.

Because those experiences were in Queensland – a state which legislated to protect LGBTQ students in religious schools against discrimination two decades ago, and which is currently consulting on promised reforms to protect LGBTQ teachers too.

Far from causing religious schools to cease to exist, as baseless scare-mongering by groups like Christian Schools Australia assert, the main outcome has simply been that LGBTQ students can finally learn and grow safe from discrimination on the basis of who they are.

And, I’m reliably informed by people whom I trust, that includes at the school I went to. Change is possible.

Sadly, that still has not happened everywhere, with religious schools legally free to discriminate against LGBTQ students under Commonwealth law, and in NSW, WA and SA too.

Commonwealth Parliament can rectify this by immediately implementing the straight-forward recommendations of the ALRC report. If they do, they would be choosing to bestow a brighter future on LGBTQ students right across Australia.

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For LGBTIQ people, if this post has raised issues for you, please contact QLife on 1800 184 527, or via webchat: https://qlife.org.au/resources/chat

Or contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.

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For an extended account of my experiences at that homophobic and harmful religious boarding school, you can read the following:

The longest five years

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