A petition calling on Scott Morrison to amend legislation allowing faith-based schools to discriminate against LGBT students and staff has been delivered to Canberra by a group of young queer people.

The Change.org petition, which garnered more than 52,000 signatures, was created by Minus18’s Adrian Murdoch and hand delivered to Senators Penny Wong and Richard Di Natale on Wednesday afternoon. The petition was created last year, after recommendations from the Philip Ruddock-led religious freedom review were leaked, bringing to light existing exemptionsin the Sex Discrimination Act.

Murdoch said he created the petition in response to the pre-existing legislation, which gave faith-based schools licence to expel a student or fire a teacher on the basis of sexual orientation.

“The message is clear – overwhelmingly Australians believe that all students and teachers deserve to be protected from religious discrimination,” he told the Star Observer.

“Today Minus18 shares the voices of 52,391 students, parents, teachers, and community members from every state and territory in Australia who call on the Morrison Government to end the religious exceptions to discrimination laws based on sexuality and gender identity. Minus18 hopes that the petition delivery will signal enough support for a bill to pass protecting the rights of LGBTIQ students, teachers, and staff.”