Emmey Leo lived a lonely, secret life at high school.
"I generally sort of kept to myself. I didn't really talk to people. I didn't interact too much," Emmey says.
Citipointe Christian College, an evangelical school in Brisbane, was "a harsh environment for someone like me".
Now a transgender woman, Emmey says queer kids "really had to be underground" at the conservative Christian school, from which she graduated last year.
"And when you're in a school where you're isolated it's very hard to find each other," she tells Australian Story.
But that changed dramatically in January.
As the school became engulfed in a political firestorm over religious freedom, the shroud of secrecy and shame suddenly lifted.
Many like Emmey discovered they were not as alone as they thought, as LGBTIQ+ students past and present stepped out of the shadows, and into the spotlight, during a polarising national debate.
"I didn't really want anyone else to go through the same thing I did, which is why I continue to fight," Emmey says.
Being gay 'often portrayed as an evil choice'
Felicity Myers always knew she was attracted to girls. But it was a secret she kept close during her time at Citipointe.
Felicity, who graduated from the school in 2020, remembers her first day as a new student in 2018 at the start of grade 10.
Citipointe was welcoming another arrival that day, and new principal Pastor Brian Mulheran, who previously headed Citipointe's Bible college, delivered a lengthy address which would remain "imprinted" on Felicity.
"He had a list of sins," she recalls, "with homosexuality being one of them".
For a developing adolescent, "when you realise that the school you're in thinks you are not a worthy person, and should not be existing as you are, it stirs up feelings of fear and shame", Felicity says.
It was a message she would hear repeatedly during her time at school, to the point where it started to affect her sense of self-worth.
Citipointe taught that being gay was "a sinful, wrong thing to be doing", she says. "It was often portrayed as an evil choice."
In class debates and Christian studies classes, Felicity would be sitting in a room with students, discussing issues like homosexuality, abortion, marriage and gender identity.
Many of her classmates didn't seem to realise there were LGBTIQ+ students in the room, or that the conversations were "actually damaging some of us sitting [there]".
"It was really challenging to be in that space when people are discussing your worthiness to just exist as a part of society," she says.
"It definitely did have an impact on my mental health, self-confidence and self-worth."
Parents are looking for 'Christian values' for their kids
Set on a vast, leafy campus in Carindale, in Brisbane's south-east, Citipointe Christian College is run by the Citipointe Church under the International Network of Churches.
The school educates children from pre-school to high school, is integrated with a university on the same grounds, and has a conservative interpretation of the Bible's ethical teachings.
According to Mark Spencer, director of public policy at Australian Christian Schools, Australia has an unusually large non-government education sector compared with other comparable countries.
Most of those schools are faith-based institutions popular with parents for their traditional values.
"The overwhelming reason that parents are saying they're coming to our schools is because of the values that we have, the Christian values that they're looking for," Mr Spencer says.
Kimberley Bradford, who attended Citipointe for all her schooling, remembers the school of her childhood as socially conservative and academically rigorous, but above all caring towards its students.
"If someone fell down in the playground, someone would be there and help them up and pray for them and make sure that they were OK," she says. "And to my parents, that was really important."
After high school and university at Citipointe, Kimberley returned to the school in 2020 as a teacher, but says it became "more conservative" when Mr Mulheran was appointed principal.
She tells Australian Story she, "didn't like a lot of what was said" in his addresses to the school.
"What he was saying was so not what Christianity represented to me," Kimberley says.
"But I wasn't exactly an experienced teacher able to go out and teach anywhere."
'I didn't want to be seen as a sinner'
Felicity remembers the fear and trepidation she would feel ahead of assemblies and chapel meetings, wondering if homosexuality would be mentioned.
"I was still on the journey sort of discovering who I was and coming to terms with it," she says.
"That, I think, put a bit of a halt in that journey. Maybe it's not OK to be who I am? Maybe I have just been making these evil choices my whole life?
"If you're being told this day in, day out, that guilt does start to build up. But it wasn't just me."
Others were wrestling with the same feelings of guilt.
"I spent my entire childhood at Citipointe trying to hide, afraid to be myself," says Nick Collins, who graduated in 2013, "because I didn't want to be seen as a sinner".
For those who failed to live up to the school's strict Christian teachings on sexual ethics, there were consequences.
One fellow student would later allege to Felicity how she was "called in and extensively questioned" by the school in March 2019 after posting a photo on social media of herself kissing a girl.
"I was forced to admit that I made a mistake," said the student, who asked to remain anonymous.
"My parents were informed. I still wasn't ready to come out."
'We'd prefer you wear something gender neutral'
Emmey didn't realise she was queer until grade nine.
In 2020 she started contemplating one of the biggest decisions of her young life – wearing a dress to her school formal.
"By going in the dress, she was coming out," her mother, Janina Leo, says.
"It was essentially my big moment to say to everyone, 'Hey, this is who I am'," Emmey adds.
Emmey posted a picture of the red frock she intended to wear on her private Instagram profile, which, "slowly crept its way up the chain of command at the school until it got to the principal".
In an email, the school warned that she would be "ruining other people's night by going in the dress," Emmey says.
Emmey and her mother, who had two other children attending the school, sought legal advice and a letter was sent to the school alleging discrimination.
"The school did give in and say: 'You can wear what you want to the formal, but we would prefer if you wore something gender neutral'," Janina says.
"But we decided, 'Well, Emmey's going in a dress'."
Turning up to the formal in her red dress was a "euphoric" experience for Emmey.
"I was really happy to be finally looking how I wanted to look in front of all those people," she says.
Janina now believes the formal incident was "directly related" to the furore that was to follow after the summer holidays.
"At the time, we felt like we'd won a bit of a battle," she says. "Emmey got to pave the way for other kids.
"But, I think that Emmey presenting to the formal in a dress really pushed Brian Mulheran to step up for what he saw as flying the flag for his Christian faith and the Christian faith of the school."
One school’s contract sparks national debate
It was 4:58pm on January 28, 2022, the Friday before Citipointe students were to begin the new term, when parents received an updated "contract of enrolment" from Mr Mulheran.
The attached Declaration of Faith stated:
“We believe that any form of sexual immorality (including but not limited to; adultery, fornication, homosexual acts, bisexual acts, bestiality, incest, paedophilia, and pornography) is sinful and offensive to God and is destructive to human relationships and society.”
Within the contract was a new clause stipulating that students could only be enrolled on the basis of their "biological sex".
The school community was divided over the document. Many parents supported the principal and his policies.
David d'Lima, South Australian director of Family Voice, says faith-based schools should be able to "specify what it is that they believe".
"So, it's a pity that parents might be surprised to find out that Christian schools have a biblical Christian ethos," he says.
Janina made the decision to pull her two other children out of the school immediately. "There was no way I was going to sign this," she says.
Felicity, who by this stage had graduated and was living her "own better life" as a university student, was "shocked" when her younger sister sent her a screenshot of the contract.
"I felt physically sick," she says. "My stomach churned, my hands were shaking."
Here, in black and white, were the views that she says had made her student life so difficult.
"Something just sort of sparked inside," Felicity says.
She knew there were kids at the school who were "still being drastically affected".
Felicity hit social media, "just saying how wrong it is", not realising it would help set the ball rolling for other LGBTIQ+ students and ex-students to come out against the school's new enrolment policy.
"To publicly shame an individual for their identity is disgusting. These are basic human rights," she wrote in an Instagram post.
"Overnight it blew up and got all this attention," she says.
"That really made me think, 'Wow, there is a lot of people who want to see this change happen.'"
Citipointe supporters receive backlash, death threats
Citipointe was rapidly becoming the crucible for a fiery national debate over the Coalition's proposed religious discrimination bill and and a school's right to religious freedom.
A group of students who had been so marginalised and unhappy at the school were rising up, without quite meaning to.
By Sunday morning, Felicity was being contacted by national television networks and was speaking out about her years as a gay teen at the school.
"All of us have been silenced for far too long," she says. "Some of the stories I have heard go back 30 years."
Local MP Corrine McMillan says she fielded close to 100 calls from families "who were distressed and seeking alternative educational options".
Bethany Lau graduated in 2013. Disheartened to hear the belief system of her former school had only hardened, she started a Change.Org petition, which amassed more than 150,000 signatures.
"This culture existed back then, but it was unspoken. This contract was so overt," she says.
Mr Mulheran responded to the criticism in a video statement, denying the school was discriminating against gay and transgender students.
"While I've been principal at the college, we have not expelled or refused to enrol any student on the basis that they are gay or transgender," he said.
"We have the freedom to maintain our Christian ethos and provide families and education based on our shared beliefs. Legitimate exercise of religious freedom is not discrimination."
But the backlash was swift and effective, and the school was soon forced to reverse its position.
By Wednesday, Citipointe had torn the contract up, and by Friday, the principal had stood aside.
"Staff received death threats, students were being bullied," says Mark Spencer of Christian Schools Australia.
"I've heard that students were told by their employers not to wear the Citipointe uniform when they came into their part-time jobs.
"We also had a very pernicious, in my view, campaign … we had the state attorney-general using the power of the government to actually call forth to solicit complaints against the school."
Families who supported the new contract closed ranks behind the school.
A parent group called Pray For Citipointe was started to support the school and its new contract.
There were "We Love Citipointe" T-shirts. That weekend, Mr Mulheran was given a standing ovation by his congregation.
The timing of the Citipointe contract furore was significant.
In the week that followed, politicians in Canberra were heatedly debating the Coalition government's religious discrimination bill.
"I think the Citipointe story had a profound impact on the conscience of many of my colleagues in the Coalition party room," former MP Trent Zimmerman says.
Liberal backbenchers raised concerns the bill could empower religious schools to issue statements of faith like Citipointe had.
"I believe that we've already begun to see the potential impact of this legislation, which is a slippery slope to setting our society back decades," Tasmanian MP Bridget Archer told parliament.
When it came to the vote, five Liberal politicians crossed the floor. And, although the bill passed the lower house, it was quickly shelved.
How to now balance protections for people of faith with the human rights of individuals is a problem the Labor government will need to address when it revisits the issue during this parliamentary term.
Felicity's mission to make sure 'every student is supported'
After years of silence, Felicity, along with a group of ex-students and like-minded LGBTIQ+ campaigners, were finally speaking up.
They came together to start an awareness campaign called Educate Don't Discriminate.
"It did influence a lot of people to share their stories and experiences," she says.
"It turned into a flood of messages. It made us realise how big of an issue it was and how many students are still being affected by being in places where they don't feel safe."
One member of the group was transgender former Citipointe student Samuel Martin, who is now 30.
At the time the scandal erupted, he wasn't out publicly.
"But I thought about any kids being at that school and struggling with their gender identity and how they would feel seeing that contract," he says.
Samuel came out as transgender on social media. The next day he went to work and got "nothing but love".
"Everyone hugged me and told me they were so proud of me … It was amazing to really see that everyone around me loves and accepts me for who I am," he says.
Samuel told Australian Story about being taught he was an "abomination" at school.
"I just really wanted to address with the school they need to realise how harmful this is to young kids already trying to navigate their sense of self," he says.
"I don't think they even realise how big of an impact this could have."
Felicity and others are now taking the fight to the Queensland Human Rights Commission, in a bid to see lasting change.
Felicity is determined the campaign won't be remembered as just "some media frenzy that would blow over".
"I want to see changes in our laws that ensure students are accepted, supported and valued in every single school environment," she says.
The LGBTI Legal Service says it will be a test case.
The complaint is currently being investigated by the commission.
As state and territory governments undertake reviews of their anti-discrimination legislation, Mark Spencer, of Australian Christian Schools, says they are creating a “lawyer’s picnic”.
"They're making it so difficult, imposing so many hurdles on faith-based schools that all the advice we're getting is … that it's going to result in expensive and complicated litigation," he says.
Because of her experiences at school, Felicity is no longer religious.
Once she got to uni, she says, "my confidence definitely came back and I definitely was able to thrive as myself, which is not something I had previously experienced from being at school".
Emmey hopes one day Educate Don't Discriminate will be part of the curriculum, providing resources for teachers and students even in Christian schools.
Now also at university, she's "not really pressured to hide anymore," she says. "And it's been great."
Neither Citipointe nor former principal Mr Mulheran provided a comment to Australian Story.
Watch Australian Story's Losing Faith on iview and Youtube.
Disclosure: A member of the Australian Story editorial team is related to a staffer in the Queensland Education Ministerial office.
