Who Targets the Church? How International Philanthropy Is Influencing Religious Freedom in Australia

This is the fifth piece in a series that has followed a single thread: the documented pipeline through which private international philanthropy has shaped Australian law on sex and gender. The short version for new readers: a small group of very wealthy private donors, centred on the American billionaire Jon Stryker and his Arcus Foundation, have spent more than twenty years funding legal, academic, and advocacy infrastructure that contributed to the environment in which the 2013 federal law change redefining sex discrimination occurred, and are now funding a campaign to remove the religious exemptions that protect Christian schools and organisations from its full effect. If you have read the earlier pieces, you know where we are. If you have not, here is where the story stands.

In What Is a Woman? I asked a question about biology that public institutions can no longer answer plainly. In Who Shapes the Child? I traced how academic arguments for displacing parental rights travel from journals into policy. In From Philosophy to Federal Court I documented the full intellectual pipeline from philosophy seminar to the Full Federal Court judgment of 15 May 2026, which confirmed that the 2013 gender identity provisions make the exclusion of a transgender woman from a women-only service unlawful. And in Who Funds the Redefinition of Sex? I followed the money, to the Arcus Foundation, Jon Stryker, the Bellagio meeting of 2008, the Global Philanthropy Project, Equality Australia, and the Australian government's formal co-investment in the same international advocacy network.

That fourth piece closed a loop I had not fully anticipated when I began. The question I thought I was asking about legal philosophy turned out to be inseparable from a question about institutional power. And as I continued pulling on the thread after publication, I found one more layer that the funding article did not fully document.

The same network that built the legal category of gender identity in Australian law in 2013 is now systematically targeting the last structural protection that shields Christian schools, churches, and organisations from being compelled to operate against their convictions.

And the mechanism it is using to do so in South Australia, in your state if you are reading this from anywhere in South Australia, the state Don Dunstan's reforming government shaped in the 1970s and whose progressive reputation still defines it, runs directly from a private New York foundation through a coordinating body to a parliamentary bill introduced in August 2024.

None of it is hidden. All of it is documented. What follows is a structural account of how it works, and what it means.

The Destination: Not Just Recognition, But Elimination

When I traced the philosophical pipeline to the Full Federal Court in Article Three, I was careful to describe what the judgment did and did not establish. The Full Federal Court judgment in Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd v Tickle [2026] FCAFC 64 confirmed that the 2013 gender identity provisions make the exclusion of a transgender woman from a women-only service unlawful, even where that exclusion turns on perceived sexed appearance. Biological sex did not disappear from Australian law. It became a competing category, one that can be overridden.

But the academic and legal infrastructure that produced the 2013 amendment was not built merely to achieve recognition alongside biological sex. I want to be precise about this, because it is the most serious claim in this series and it requires the most careful handling.

The evidence comes from the same Columbia University academic cluster documented in Articles Two and Three. In 2011, Chinyere Ezie published "Deconstructing the Body: Transgender and Intersex Identities and Sex Discrimination — The Need for Strict Scrutiny" in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. The paper's central argument, stated in its own opening pages, is that 'demanding that people be officially classified by sex is just as invidious as maintaining registries of racial composition, a now disavowed practice.' It proposed that sex classifications in law be treated as a suspect category, like race, presumptively invalid and subject to strict judicial scrutiny (meaning courts would assume a sex classification was unlawful unless the government could justify it with a compelling reason).

The entire paper opens by framing its subject as courts and agencies 'tasked with issuing identity documents' adjudicating sex: that is the domain within which the strict scrutiny framework is applied throughout. In the paper's own acknowledgments footnote, Ezie thanks Katherine Franke, Kendall Thomas, and Dean Spade by name, precisely the network of Columbia scholars whose work runs through the academic pipeline documented in Articles Two and Three.

The Yogyakarta Principles Plus 10, published in 2017, call for removing sex and gender markers from official documents entirely. The academic track and the international legal track are converging on the same destination: a legal framework in which biological sex carries no operative authority. (The Yogyakarta Principles, a set of private international guidelines written by a group of legal experts in 2006 and used throughout this series as a reference point, are the connective tissue between those two tracks, as earlier articles in this series document in full.)

Many of the academic and advocacy frameworks documented in this series point toward reducing or removing the legal significance of biological sex in areas where gender identity claims arise. The Tickle judgment reflects that direction in miniature. If the High Court appeal proceeds, Australia could move further along that trajectory through the very constitutional mechanisms the 2013 amendment relied upon.

Understanding this destination is necessary background for what follows. The religious exemptions protected under South Australia's Equal Opportunity Act are the immediate target, while Section 38 of the federal Sex Discrimination Act remains the broader national protection that advocacy groups continue to challenge. Both layers are in play simultaneously, and the same network that built the 2013 legal category is now funding the campaign to remove the protections that stand against its full application.

Two Tracks, One Destination

In my funding article I documented what Arcus's own grant records, as reported by the Catholic News Agency and the National Catholic Register drawing from those records, show about the Arcus Foundation's approach to the Christian church.

In plain terms: the network is working on two fronts simultaneously. On the outside, it funds legislation and litigation to strip away the legal protections that allow Christian schools to employ people who share their faith. On the inside, it funds organisations that try to change what Christianity itself teaches about sex and gender, so that resistance to the legal program erodes from within. One track removes the fortress walls. The other persuades the garrison to open the gates.

Track 1: The External Legal Pressure

Target: Removing the legal protections, Section 38 of the federal Sex Discrimination Act and equivalent state exemptions, that shield Christian schools and organisations from being compelled to act against their convictions.

●       At least $200,000 to a coalition of groups to counter the Catholic Church's narrative at the 2014 Synod on the Family.

●       $600,000 to the ACLU for its Campaign to End the Use of Religion to Discriminate.

●       $100,000 for communications to convince conservative Americans that religious exemptions are 'un-American'.

●       $150,000 in 2016 to 'beat back religious exemptions at federal and state levels'.

●       $300,000 to the Proteus Fund's Rights, Faith and Democracy Collaborative, a grantmaking fund whose explicit mission is opposing the use of religious exemptions.

Track 2: The Internal Theological Shift

Target: Convincing the garrison to open the gates, funding organisations that make the theological case for LGBTQ inclusion from within Christianity, so that resistance to the legal program erodes from the inside.

●       Approximately $550,000 (2014–2018) to the Reformation Project to 'reform church teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity among conservative and evangelical communities', including funding five major conferences training individuals to persuade conservative Christians.

●       $250,000 to Dignity USA / Equally Blessed Coalition specifically to 'combat the firing of LGBTQ staff and allies who support marriage equality at Catholic institutions'.

●       $75,000 to Faithful America (2014) to promote media visibility for Christians who oppose religious freedom arguments.

Global Religions Program (Established 2017): In 2017, Arcus formally established a dedicated Global Religions Program to work with the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This is not an incidental side project. It is a dedicated institutional program, funded by the world's largest private LGBTQ philanthropist, with an explicit mandate to reshape religious doctrine from within Christianity.

Arcus did not treat religious communities only as obstacles to be overcome legally. From its own disclosed grant records it operated a systematic program of influence inside Christianity, funding organisations whose explicit purpose is to persuade evangelical and Catholic communities to change their doctrine on sexual identity. Both tracks are funded. Both are active. Both converge on the same goal.

I want to be clear, as I have been throughout this series, about what I am and am not claiming. I am not arguing that every person who has engaged with the Reformation Project or progressive faith organisations is acting in bad faith. Many are sincere Christians working through real questions. I am arguing that the funding architecture around that engagement is not theologically neutral. It is strategically directed, resourced by a specific philanthropic network, and oriented toward a legal and policy destination.

The UN Mechanism: How International Pressure Reached Australian Religious Schools

In Article Four I documented that Arcus funds the institutional infrastructure surrounding the UN Independent Expert on SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity), a United Nations position established to monitor and report on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity, first through a grant to the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program and subsequently through a grant to Yale University.

Victor Madrigal-Borloz served as UN Independent Expert on SOGI from 2018 to 2023. (For readers joining this series here: GPP, the Global Philanthropy Project, is a New York-based body that coordinates international LGBTQ+ philanthropic strategy. Its founding and its connections to the Arcus Foundation are documented in Article Four.) Throughout his tenure he was based at Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program, the program Arcus had funded to support his work. In June 2023, Madrigal-Borloz issued a thematic report on the intersection of freedom of religion or belief and sexual orientation and gender identity.

That report specifically called out Australian religious exemptions. It cited cases in Australia where teachers had been fired by religious schools because of their sexual orientation. It pointed to government-funded faith-based service providers, foster care and adoption agencies, that can lawfully reject people on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity. Equality Australia welcomed the report and had submitted evidence directly to Madrigal-Borloz's thematic inquiry in January 2023, before the report was finalised.

That submission, published on the OHCHR website, argued that 'the freedom of religion and belief has been invoked in misleading ways to justify human rights violations' and explicitly framed Australia's religious exemptions as anomalies to be corrected under international human rights obligations. It cited the 2013 SDA Amendment as the baseline from which religious exemptions were a 'notable exception', positioning Section 38 not as a deliberate legislative balance but as an anomaly to be closed.

The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) then used that international human rights framework, 'Australia's international obligations', as the touchstone for its 2024 recommendations. It was the same interpretive mechanism traced from the beginning of this series: the Yogyakarta Principles framework, used by advocates and parliamentary materials as an interpretive guide to Australia's treaty obligations during the 2013 reform process, now applied by the same advocacy network to the religious exemptions that protect Christian institutions.

Arcus funds Harvard → the UN Expert issues a 2023 report targeting Australian religious exemptions → Equality Australia feeds that inquiry with submissions → the ALRC uses the international human rights framework to recommend blanket removal of Section 38 of the Sex Discrimination Act → the Albanese government attempts to legislate it. The same architecture, the same mechanism, a new target.

The Report That Went to Parliament: Dismissed, Denied and Demeaned - Religious Freedom Australia

When the Albanese government stalled on federal reform of religious exemptions in August 2024, Greens MLC Robert Simms moved without waiting for Canberra. He introduced the Equal Opportunity (Religious Bodies) Amendment Bill into the South Australian Legislative Council, a bill that would remove all religious exemptions from the state's Equal Opportunity Act, with the sole retention being the right of religious organisations to appoint ministers on the basis of religious adherence.

The evidentiary basis Simms cited in his parliamentary speech was a report published by Equality Australia: Dismissed, Denied and Demeaned, released on 25 March 2024, documenting what it described as the extent of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in faith-based schools and organisations across Australia.

The South Australia-specific finding Simms cited was direct: the report found that 50 per cent of South Australian schools were showing evidence of discrimination, and were on average more likely to be discriminatory than schools in Victoria, NSW, or Western Australia. The figure is drawn from the report's analysis of publicly available school policies and enrolment documentation, the methodology is set out in the report itself.

The report was launched at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. It received more than 1,000 media mentions in a single day, according to Equality Australia's own 2023–24 Impact Report. It was written by Equality Australia's Legal Director and Legal Policy Advisor, with research assistance from students at Monash University's Castan Centre Human Rights Clinic. Its foreword was written by the Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG, who is simultaneously listed as a patron of Equality Australia in the same Impact Report.

Part III of the report draws explicitly on international human rights obligations as the standard against which Australian religious exemptions are measured, arguing that Australian law is 'out-of-line with international human rights law.' That is the same interpretive architecture applied at state level, the Equality Australia report substituting for the Yogyakarta Principles as the normative reference point, but serving the same function: establishing an international human rights standard against which Australian law is judged and found wanting.

So who funds Equality Australia, the organisation whose report went directly into the SA parliamentary record?

The answer is documented from a primary source. Equality Australia's 2023–24 Impact Report names its funders. Cornerstone Supporters for the period include the Snow Foundation, the Oranges & Sardines Foundation (the philanthropic vehicle of Geoff Ainsworth, son of Aristocrat Leisure founder Len Ainsworth), the Berg Family Foundation, the Pratt Foundation, the Sidney Myer Fund, and King & Wood Mallesons. Program Partners include the NSW Ministry of Health, and the Global Philanthropy Project.

GPP is named as a current program partner of Equality Australia in the same financial year, 2023–24, in which Dismissed, Denied and Demeaned was researched, finalised, and launched. And the Arcus Foundation's Social Justice Program Vice President, Alli Jernow, sat on the GPP Board of Directors in 2024, confirmed in GPP's own 2024 Year in Review.

The chain from Arcus to the SA Legislative Council is now complete and documented at every link: Arcus Foundation VP sits on GPP board → GPP is current program partner of Equality Australia → Equality Australia publishes Dismissed, Denied and Demeaned citing international human rights law → report launched at Parliament House with 1,000+ media mentions → Simms cites the report verbatim in SA parliament → Equal Opportunity (Religious Bodies) Amendment Bill introduced August 2024.

South Australia: The State Where Two Tracks Meet

South Australia has a particular significance in this story. It was the first Australian state to decriminalise homosexuality in 1975, a fact Simms invoked in parliament to argue that SA should now lead again. The state's self-image as a place of progressive liberalism is real and should be acknowledged. But that history does not require Christian schools in South Australia to be compelled to hire teachers whose lives are in direct conflict with their founding convictions.

What happened in South Australia in 2024 was not one bill but two, pursuing complementary objectives in the same political environment and with the support of overlapping constituencies.

First: the SA Conversion Practices Prohibition Act, passed by the SA parliament in October 2024 with Greens support and in force from 1 April 2025. Introducing the bill in the Legislative Council, SA Attorney General Kyam Maher stated: 'We know that these parts of human identity cannot be changed, and we know that practices which try to change these immutable characteristics can cause significant and lasting damage to victims.' That framing treats gender identity as an immutable characteristic deserving legal protection comparable to biological sex, the same trajectory Ezie's 2011 Columbia paper was arguing toward when it proposed that sex classifications be treated as presumptively invalid. It is now SA statute.

The Australian Christian Lobby and Freedom For Faith both raised concerns that the bill's non-binding exceptions for religious expression could be weaponised through statutory interpretation to narrow the exemptions that remain in SA's Equal Opportunity Act. Freedom For Faith observed that the examples given of permissible religious conduct are framed as 'non-binding', meaning a court could determine they do not constitute exhaustive protections.

Second: the Equal Opportunity (Religious Bodies) Amendment Bill, introduced 28 August 2024, which would remove all religious exemptions from SA's Equal Opportunity Act. As of the time of writing this bill has not passed, but it is before parliament, it has Greens support, and it is applying sustained pressure on the Malinauskas government to act. Simms has made clear that federal inaction on Section 38 of the Sex Discrimination Act opens the space for states to move.

There is also an academic dimension specific to South Australia worth naming. An ARC-funded research team including academics from the University of South Australia submitted to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act Review recommending removal of religious exemptions, explicitly aligning their recommendations with the ALRC's recommendation to repeal Section 38 of the federal SDA. The project is titled Youth, Sexuality, and Religion: Digital Media, School Cultures, Exemptions. It is taxpayer-funded through the Australian Research Council's Discovery Grant program. South Australian academic expertise is being deployed, through competitive public funding, to recommend the dismantling of the legal protections that shield SA's Christian schools.

Two bills. One passed and in force. One before parliament. A nationally launched report cited in both. A SA-based academic pipeline producing recommendations that align with the legislative agenda. And a funding chain that runs from a private New York foundation through an international coordinating body to an Australian advocacy organisation, whose report is now in the South Australian parliamentary record, and whose program partner had an Arcus Foundation VP on its board in the same year. The SA bills target state-level exemptions; Section 38 of the federal Sex Discrimination Act remains the larger national framework that the same advocacy network continues to challenge separately.

The Broader Network: Arcus Was Not Alone

I want to be honest about what this series has and has not documented in terms of additional funders. The Arcus Foundation has the most direct, traceable Australian connections. But Arcus operated within a coordinated international network, and several other institutions within that network are worth naming precisely.

The Gill Foundation (Tim Gill, Colorado) is a confirmed Bellagio 2008 attendee, Tim Gill and Scott Miller appear in the published participant list alongside Stryker. The Gill Foundation has invested more than $475 million in LGBTQ advocacy. Its former CEO stated publicly in 2015 that the goal was to defeat religious freedom exemptions within two to three years. Gill founded OutGiving in 1996, a private, invitation-only biennial conference of major LGBTQ philanthropists to coordinate strategy.

Wellspring Philanthropic Fund (C. Frederick Taylor, New York) is connected through Andrew Park, whose presence at Bellagio 2008 is confirmed and whose co-chairmanship of the Global Philanthropy Project is documented in Article Four. Wellspring operated a dedicated SOGIE Program seeking to 'confront and dismantle entrenched homophobia and transphobia.' It is winding down its grantmaking by 2028.

Open Society Foundations (George Soros) is connected through Heather Doyle of the Open Society Institute, a confirmed Bellagio 2008 attendee. OSF published License to Be Yourself in 2014, a strategic document on legal gender recognition that used Australia as a case study model for global replication, at precisely the moment Arcus was funding the infrastructure around the 2013 SDA Amendment.

TAWANI Foundation (Jennifer Pritzker, Chicago) has funded the same Williams Institute at UCLA that Arcus also funds, the premier academic research centre on sexual orientation and gender identity law whose output is used by policymakers, judges, and advocates worldwide. TAWANI also funded the world's first endowed chair in transgender studies at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Multiple funders converging on the same academic institutions is a structural feature of how the research environment is shaped.

None of these organisations has a documented direct grant to Australian organisations in the same tier as Arcus's confirmed Australian government co-investment. I am naming them as the broader network within which Arcus operates, the international philanthropic infrastructure of which Australia's co-investment is a specific node. The agreed formulation applies: aligned institutional networks, not conspirators.

What the Series Has Established

Across five pieces, this series has traced a documented pipeline from private philanthropy to Australian law. Here is what has been established at each link.

2006: The Yogyakarta Principles are drafted in a private meeting in Indonesia. Never adopted by the United Nations. Not a treaty. Michael O'Flaherty is one of the two lead drafters.

2008: The Arcus Foundation convenes 29 international leaders at Bellagio, Italy, committing to expand global philanthropy for LGBT rights. O'Flaherty is present. So are representatives of the Open Society Institute, the Gill Foundation, Wellspring Advisors, the Ford Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Astraea Foundation, and Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues. Andrew Park of Wellspring Advisors, who initiated the process supporting the creation of the Yogyakarta Principles, is there. He becomes co-chair of the Global Philanthropy Project.

2013: The Sex Discrimination Amendment Act passes through the Commonwealth Parliament. Gender identity becomes a competing legal category alongside biological sex. The Yogyakarta Principles are used as an interpretive reference for CEDAW (the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) and the ICCPR (the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) to satisfy the constitutional requirement under Section 51(xxix), the External Affairs power, that allows the Commonwealth to legislate on matters covered by international treaties. Section 38 religious exemptions remain, the next structural target.

2023: GPP and Equality Australia co-author Partnering with Pride. Equality Australia organises Sydney WorldPride. Penny Wong announces Australia's Inclusion and Equality Fund. Equality Australia submits to the Arcus-funded UN Independent Expert's thematic inquiry on religious exemptions. O'Flaherty becomes Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe.

2024: The ALRC recommends removing Section 38 of the SDA, using international human rights obligations as its touchstone. Equality Australia launches Dismissed, Denied and Demeaned at Parliament House. The SA Conversion Practices Prohibition Act passes. The Greens Equal Opportunity (Religious Bodies) Amendment Bill is introduced in SA parliament on 28 August 2024. DFAT's Equality Collaboration, AUD 20.9 million, 2025–2031, commences. Arcus VP Alli Jernow sits on the GPP Board.

15 May 2026: The Full Federal Court hands down judgment in Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd v Tickle [2026] FCAFC 64. Sall Grover is found to have discriminated unlawfully. The 2013 gender identity provisions are confirmed operative. The pathway to the High Court opens.

The pipeline from Bellagio 2008 to the SA Legislative Council and the Full Federal Court in 2026 is documented at every link. It is not speculative. It is drawn from primary sources: foundation websites, grant databases, government funding announcements, parliamentary records, court judgments, and Equality Australia's own published Impact Report. None of it has been hidden.

What This Means for Christian Australians

I have been careful throughout this series to distinguish between structural arguments and character arguments. I am not arguing that the people within this network have no genuine concern for LGBTQ+ people. I am not arguing that government officials were corrupt. I am not arguing that anyone acted in bad faith.

What I am arguing is structural, and it has direct implications for Christian schools, churches, and organisations in this country, and specifically in South Australia.

The religious exemptions under challenge in SA, and at the federal level through the ongoing contest over Section 38 of the Sex Discrimination Act, are not technical legal provisions. They are the practical expression of a principle the Christian tradition has always insisted on: that the church, and the institutions through which it serves the community, must be able to be the church. A Christian school is not a government school that happens to meet on Sundays. It is a community organised around a specific understanding of human nature, human dignity, and the good life. Its ability to hire teachers who share and embody that understanding is not a discrimination exemption. It is a condition of its existence as what it actually is.

The argument Equality Australia makes in its UN submission is that invoking religious freedom in this context is 'misleading.' The argument the Simms bill makes is that government funding creates an obligation to abandon faith-based employment criteria. Both arguments are contestable, and both are being made with the backing of a documented international funding network that has been working toward this outcome for more than fifteen years.

Christian communities in South Australia and across Australia are not facing a spontaneous cultural shift. They are facing a coordinated, resourced, institutionally sophisticated campaign whose architecture this series has now traced in detail. The asymmetry between that campaign and the resources available to faith communities is real, and Christians who want to engage faithfully need to understand it clearly.

That does not mean the response is outrage. The response I have tried to model in this series is clarity, precision about what has happened, how it was funded, what it aims at, and what it does and does not establish. Christians are called to engage the world as it actually is, not as we might wish it to be. And the world as it actually is, in this specific domain, involves a documented international philanthropic network, a set of private legal frameworks promoted as international law, a Commonwealth legislative amendment, a Federal Court judgment, and now two bills in the South Australian parliament.

Knowing the structure does not resolve the pastoral questions, the theological debates, or the difficult conversations Christian communities are having about how to respond to people experiencing gender dysphoria with compassion and truth. This series has not tried to do that. What it has tried to do is provide the structural account that faithful, informed engagement requires.

The Full Picture

When I began this series I was sitting with a question about biology. I did not expect the thread to lead where it has. But following evidence wherever it goes is the only methodology that produces accounts worth reading, and the evidence in this case has been consistent, primary-sourced, and in important respects publicly available to anyone willing to look.

What this series has documented is this: a small number of very wealthy private actors, operating through a coordinated international philanthropic infrastructure, have over twenty years systematically shaped the legal, academic, and institutional environment in which Australian sex discrimination law now operates, and are now directing that infrastructure at the religious exemptions that protect Australian Christian schools, churches, and organisations from being compelled to act against their convictions. Jon Stryker, who has personally contributed more than $500 million to the Arcus Foundation since its founding in 2000, is at the centre of that network. He is not alone.

The pipeline is traceable. The funding is documented. The strategic objectives were stated in the funders' own words. And the legislative vehicle has now arrived in the South Australian parliament, citing an Equality Australia report funded by an organisation whose program partner had an Arcus Foundation VP on its board in the same year the report was published.

None of it requires a conspiracy. It requires only sustained, coordinated, well-resourced advocacy operating over decades through institutional channels. That is not sinister in itself. It is how organised power works in a pluralist democracy. The appropriate response is not to match it with outrage or paranoia, but to understand it with clarity, engage it with courage, and speak about it with the precision that the evidence warrants.

The series continues. If the High Court appeal in Tickle v Giggle proceeds, the constitutional questions opened by the Full Federal Court judgment will bring Australian courts into contact with the deeper destination argument, the question of whether biological sex should remain a legally operative category at all. That would be a different article, requiring different primary sources, and carrying even more serious implications.

For now, the account is complete at this stage of the story. I have tried to write it faithfully, precisely, and with the warmth toward people and clarity about structures that I have aspired to across this series.

Until next time,

God bless