A Catholic agency has defended itself
after guidelines were issued in Australia to help the emergency services
during major disasters interact with members of the LGBTI community
after research showed that victims of the Queensland floods in 2010-11
reported increased anxiety from having to hide their sexual or gender
identity from emergency services or staying with people who were not
accepting of them.
Brisbane's Catholic Leader newspaper said
the premise behind the National Gender and Emergency Management
Guidelines had potential implications for faith-based services such as
Centacare, the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Salvation Army, Anglicare
and Lifeline, which delivered essential services in times of disaster.
The Guidelines warn that the LGBTI
community is considered “disproportionately vulnerable during and after
disaster”.
They say gender specifically plays a large part in the roles
and experience of communities in emergency prevention, planning,
response and recovery and urges "promotion and awareness of the
consequences of outsourcing response and recovery arrangements to
third-party faith-based organisations", adding in a footnote:
"Faith-based organisations are given public taxpayer funds, and are
simultaneously granted exemptions from anti-discrimination legislation."
Centacare's Executive Director in the far
north Queensland city of Cairns, Ms Anita Veivers, told the Leader her
organisation had “a long tradition of providing emergency relief and
disaster relief services to the community and this is achieved
respectfully, in a non-judgemental way”.
Ms Veivers said although the actual
guidelines did not appear to suggest precluding faith-based
organisations, an associated review of literature perpetuated the
misconception that faith-based organisations were intrinsically
discriminatory and had been referenced in the popular press.
She said the modern face of faith-based services was more accepting than the review seemed to imply.
“Our doors are open to everyone,
particularly the most disadvantaged people in the community, no matter
what their race, gender, religion or sexuality might be.”