Have you heard about Janelle Rowe?
She spent 34 years in education. Then she refused to publicly endorse an ideology she believed had no place being imposed on primary-school children.
Her reward was a disciplinary process that ultimately brought her career to an end.
Rowe was a veteran ACT primary-school principal with more than three decades in education. She had built a long and successful career. Yet after she objected to her school participating in Wear It Purple Day, an LGBTQIA+ awareness initiative for children, she found herself facing workplace allegations, supervision, and pressure from education officials.
“There was a phone call, there was an ‘I need to speak to you face-to-face’, there was a ‘bring a support person if you want to but come now’, and then I was told a list of allegations and topics that I had done wrong,” she told News24.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Rowe argued the day was “not a harmless dress-up day”.
“It requires teachers to explain what these lifestyles are about to children and I don’t feel it’s the place of schools to be talking about sexualised issues with infants and primary students,” Rowe said.
“At age four through to 12, these are still issues for parents and for families. How it’s dealt with and at what age, that’s not for the school or teachers, that’s for home.”
After she was called to a meeting, presented with a series of allegations, placed under supervision, and ultimately told that she had to support Wear It Purple Day and participate in it, she eventually resigned.
Can you blame her?
Her lawyer, John Steenhof of the Human Rights Law Alliance, subsequently obtained internal documents under freedom-of-information laws that reportedly contained highly favourable assessments of Rowe’s leadership, describing her as “outstanding” and “highly capable.”
The question, then, is: What exactly was her offence here?
The most disturbing feature of the Rowe affair is not simply that an education department promoted an LGBTQIA+ initiative.
It is that the system apparently left so little room for conscientious disagreement.
There is a world of difference between requiring a teacher to treat every child with dignity and requiring that teacher to affirm a particular progressive understanding of sexuality and gender.
The first is entirely compatible with Christian conviction.
The second is profoundly incompatible with it.
Christians do not believe that human beings should be mistreated or abused—for any reason. Christianity teaches the inherent dignity of every human being because every person is made in the image of God.
But Christianity also teaches that human sexuality is morally ordered according to God’s purposes. Jesus’ teaching about marriage and sexual morality is not something Christians are free simply to rewrite because the prevailing culture has changed.
It is the biblical definition of love. For the Christian, anything short of this biblical standard is, by definition, to act unlovingly. Thus, to require a Christian to affirm something they sincerely believe is contrary to God’s law of love is, therefore, to require them to act in a way they believe would inflict harm on others.
So, that creates a serious problem for the modern education bureaucracy.
What happens when a Christian teacher believes that something being presented as morally good is actually morally wrong?
What happens when the teacher cannot, in good conscience, tell children that something Scripture teaches to be sinful is morally affirming?
And what happens when the institution responds by saying that the teacher’s problem is not merely that she disagrees, but that she must actively affirm the opposite position? That is, a position she believes is not in the best interest of the children—a position she believes is potentially harmful for kids.
That’s where this ceases to be merely an argument about some random school event.
It becomes a question of basic religious freedom.
There’s a theological dimension to this dispute that should not be missed. In fact, it is informing and shaping the entire issue.
The modern secular consensus often presents itself as though it were religiously and morally neutral, as though the traditional Christian understanding of sexual morality were merely a religious “belief,” while the contemporary understanding of sexuality were simply objective, neutral truth.
It is not.
Both positions contain moral judgments about what human beings are, what sex means, what constitutes a good life, what relationships ought to be affirmed, what constitutes moral error, what God requires of us, and the degree to which the Bible is to be regarded as an authoritative book.
The question is therefore not whether theology has entered the classroom.
The question is whose theology will dominate others.
The Christian teacher who says, “I believe this conduct is contrary to God’s revealed moral law,” is making a theological claim.
But so is the institution that says, in effect, “You must affirm this conduct as morally good, and you must regard the traditional Christian judgment about it as unacceptable, outdated, or irrelevant”
That is not the absence of theology.
It is the imposition of a competing theology. And it is a theology that reverses the Christian moral judgment, undermines the Bible, and contradicts Christ Himself.
Under the Christian understanding, sexual behaviour outside God’s design is harmful, and therefore, sinful.
Under the prevailing institutional orthodoxy, regarding sexual behaviours as sinful has itself become the new sin.
The moral condemnation has effectively changed direction.
The Christian teacher is no longer merely being asked to refrain from mistreating someone. She can find herself being asked to affirm what she believes God forbids, and to treat the Biblical judgment itself as morally bankrupt.
That’s an extraordinary demand to place upon someone’s conscience.
Yet, a society genuinely committed to “freedom” must protect the right of people not merely to possess private beliefs, but to live consistently with them within the ordinary boundaries of public life.
Otherwise “religious freedom” becomes little more than the freedom to think in secret.
Christians cannot be told that they are free to be Christians, until they arrive at work—then their convictions and deepest held beliefs must be suspended.
That is religious belief under licence.
The proper response to disagreement is argument, not coercion.
Reasonable people can disagree with her. But disagreement is not misconduct.
If an experienced principal can spend 34 years in education, receive glowing assessments of her leadership, object to an ideological initiative on conscientious or moral grounds, and subsequently find herself under disciplinary scrutiny before leaving the profession, what lesson does that teach everyone watching?
It teaches people to keep quiet.
A teacher who encounters something they believe is morally objectionable may think twice before speaking up.
An educator who witnesses something they believe is harmful to children may decide it is safer to remain silent.
A principal may conclude that the safest course is simply to comply.
And a Christian may learn that allowing biblical convictions to shape their professional judgment comes with a price.
And that is precisely how ideological conformity spreads.
It does not always require everyone to believe the same thing.
It only requires everyone who disagrees to become afraid of saying so.
This is ultimately not just about one teacher, one school or one purple-themed day.
It is about whether Australians will continue to have genuine freedom of conscience.
It is about whether parents retain a meaningful role in determining when and how sensitive questions of sexuality and gender are introduced to their children.
It is about whether teachers can exercise professional judgment.
And, for Christians, it is about whether the public square still has room for people who take the Bible seriously.
Janelle Rowe should not have to abandon her conscience to keep her career.
Nor should anyone else.
Every teacher should be free to say: I will treat every child with dignity. I will oppose bullying. I will care for every student. But I cannot affirm something I believe is harmful to children.
That should not be a career-ending statement. That should be the conviction and care we see from all educators.