Victoria bill would criminalize any ‘religious practice’ to ‘change or suppress’ sexual orientation, gender identity (Catholic Weekly)

Victoria (map), whose capital is Melbourne, is Australia’s second most populous state. Archbishop Peter Comensoli said that any coercive practice “is an affront to human dignity” and added, “Nobody is protected when governments seek to determine what prayers are OK to say, or what faith reasonably proposes.” John Steenhoff, managing director of the Human Rights Law Alliance, said that the bill “imposes draconian limits and criminal sanctions on what Australians can think and speak about contentious issues of sexuality and gender.”