Deputy chief psychiatrist of Victoria sacked - because he support traditional marriage
Last week the deputy chief psychiatrist of Victoria, Kuruvilla George, resigned under pressure from his position on the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.
His resignation came after Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and various members of the gay lobby queried his professional judgment and his deeply held views on marriage. His crime? He signed a petition against same-sex marriage, as part of a doctors' group called Doctors for the Family.
The petition pointed out that the health of the natural family is vital to the health of society and that homosexual relationships are not a suitable environment in which to bring up children. The petition was signed by 170 doctors and had numerous academic medical references (and some interesting non-academic ones from the likes of Andrew Sullivan) to back up their opinion.
The irony here is that the gay marriage lobby, by pressuring the unfortunate professor into resignation, has used the human rights commission to effectively abuse someone's human right to express an opinion. But that is par for the course. The use of the human rights mantra to intimidate will become even worse. There was no bar on the professor signing the petition, either as a citizen or in his private capacity as a doctor, as both the attorney-general of Victoria and Deputy Premier made clear. George made no mention of his office as deputy chief psychiatrist. Nor is the professor anti-gay. He told me this week: "I am not anti-gay or anti-anyone for that matter. The submission was purely about changing the definition of marriage and legalising 'same-sex marriage'. Nothing about being anti-gay, which I have been portrayed to be. It is this injustice that has pained me the most."
The intimidatory "Right Think" of the political gay lobby now includes the entirely confected notion of "marriage equality". If one opposes this artificial notion, it is now seen as tantamount to gay bashing. Poor George, believing that the commission was neutral on such matters, since same-sex marriage is still illegal and a topic of vigorous discussion, supposed he too had the right to offer an opinion. Naively he didn't realise that he was only supposed to have an opinion if he supported the gay lobby, because, apparently, the gay lobby "owns" the HREOC.
The gay lobby embarked long ago on a policy of using human rights law and human rights bodies to get its own way. It has already gone a long way to achieving its aims. Whether the views on homosexual relationships of the doctors who signed this petition are academically valid or not is beside the point. They have the right to express their views. The scientific validity is a separate issue. Ironically, the petition's claims on the end result for public debate of same-sex marriage seem to have been vindicated by the appalling treatment of George. As the doctors' petition says, by further normalising homosexual sex, same-sex marriage will curtail "freedom of speech and belief regarding the position we believe marriage has in society ... " and "encourages charges of hate-speech and vilification if we voice our belief that every child needs a mother and a father".
You don't have to be some kind of psychological expert to be against gay marriage. Plenty of lay people feel in conscience that the homosexual lobby is pushing a distorted, artificial view of marriage in order to further normalise a sexual preference. We have enough problems with children born in ordinary families without wantonly playing with the lives of any more children. In fact the doctors' view is widely accepted and it is the same-sex marriage push that is controversial, not the heterosexual status quo. However, using human rights legislation to push something that is not a human right at all is another matter.
Many groups have used human rights legislation to get their own way, including the pro-abortion lobby, in the name of women's rights, and now the euthanasia lobby. So it is not surprising that minority groups think they own the various human rights and equal opportunities commissions. Judging by the outrage of the pro same-sex marriage lobby it is not solely because George's views are controversial.The issue here is wider than gay parenting or gay marriage, which is just part of the social agenda of a few. The issue here is that a confected idea of "human rights" is being used as a form of ideological intimidation
And it is intimidating. George told me: "I feel rather battered and bruised from the events of last week. I was shocked by the way I was targeted, though I did not make any mention of my various positions when I signed the submission to the Senate. I have learned the hard way that 'human right' and 'freedom of speech' is relative and it depends on how politically correct one is."
But there is worse. Freedom of conscience is threatened because human rights commissions are now seeking, through legal change, to overturn conscience. That goes to any issue, not just gay marriage. The law is a powerful instrument. Once upon a time the conscience was informed by things other than the law, like religion. In fact, the notion of human rights springs from religion. Hence there were exemptions for religious bodies to human rights legislation. However, as people become less religious and human rights commissions are now used to deliberately further certain confected agendas - like gay marriage - legal change achieved through these bodies can dictate what is right and wrong. In essence, the diktats of human rights commissions are replacing conscience.
If you think I exaggerate, take a look at the 31 submissions by a variety of gay and lesbian and human rights bodies that have been sent to federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon's review of anti-discrimination legislation.
Almost every one, including from human rights commissions, wants to overturn the exemptions on anti-discrimination so that there will be no exemptions for the churches; or, if exemptions are granted, they should be severely restricted; or that organisations seeking exemptions should be subject to onerous application provisions and conditions.
Roxon has claimed exemptions would be allowed, but as this newspaper's Paul Kelly commented on similar politicians' assurances that churches would be exempt from any new same-sex marriage law, only a fool would accept the idea that "exemptions" for the churches would be effective and lasting. The case of George is just a taste of what will happen to human rights if the gay lobby gets its way.
