Voltaire once said “if you wish to converse with me, define your terms”, and I think the debate over employment law governing the hiring of LGBT people, single parents, those in cohabiting relationships, and those who are divorced and remarried in organisations with a religious ethos is in bad need of some term-defining.

President Barack Obama has made headlines for signing an executive order banning companies that contract with the federal government from discrimination in hiring on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity. A number of faith leaders sympathetic to his administration had sent him a letter asking for an exemption for religious organisations. He decided not to grant this.

There are currently calls to repeal Section 37 (1) of Ireland’s Employment Equality Act: the law’s opponents argue that it allows schools, hospitals and other organisations with a religious ethos to discriminate in their hiring against those whose lifestyles run counter to that ethos. The law’s defenders (the Iona Institute among them) usually respond that protecting the religious freedom of such organisations is essential.

But it strikes me that in both these cases there could be some confusion about what is actually meant by “discrimination” and “a religious exemption” on both sides. There seem to me to be two quite different things that those words could refer to, and most discussion of the issue seems to conflate them.

The first is a right to not hire people simply because they are a particular class of person (say if they’re gay or lesbian). This seems to me to be basically unconscionable – it has no rational basis, and denies the equal dignity of every person.

But I’m not at all sure that any significant number of religious organisations in Ireland actually want that right.

What religious organisations do want protected is the right to hire people who will uphold the ethos of the organisation. This is sometimes seen as a smokescreen for the prejudice described above, but in truth it’s completely different.

Take a faith school. Such a school should ask prospective teachers of any race, gender or sexual orientation the following question: “Can you, in good conscience, support and uphold the ethos of our school, which includes upholding Catholic teaching?” If they can do so, other concerns should be irrelevant.

This, for the record, is the kind of “discrimination” that Section 37 (1) actually deals with:

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“A religious, educational or medical institution which is under the direction or control of a body established for religious purposes or whose objectives include the provision of services in an environment which promotes certain religious values shall not be taken to discriminate against a person for the purposes of this Part or Part II if—

“(a) it gives more favourable treatment, on the religion ground, to an employee or a prospective employee over that person where it isreasonable to do so in order to maintain the religious ethos of the institution, or

“(b) it takes action which is reasonably necessary to prevent an employee or a prospective employee from undermining the religious ethos of the institution.”

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To be sure, this brings its own questions: is the requirement to uphold an organisation’s ethos being applied universally? (.i.e. How is a faith school dealing with straight teachers who are divorced and remarried?) Is being willing to uphold an organisation’s ethos the same as living perfectly in accordance with it in one’s own life? Are there important differences between upholding ethos while teaching in a faith school, (where part of the job is to answer children’s questions about said ethos) and doing so while working in a religious organisation in a non-teaching role?

But it is eminently possible to protect both the rights of gay employees, employees who are single parents, employees who are divorced and remarried and the religious freedom of schools and other organisations. There is no conflict here, unless campaigners are determined to use the power of the State to effectively stop faith schools conveying the beliefs of their faith tradition – in which case we are having a different debate altogether.