Doug PollardFoxes in the henhouse
Attorney General Robert Clark
It started when a group of ‘Doctors for the Family’ made a submission to the Senate marriage enquiry. What could be more innocuous than a group of family doctors standing up for families? But which families?
They concealed themselves behind a couple of figleaves. First, the submission was made as a group of doctors, implying that their evidence was based on scientific, medical grounds. And the second was the use of the word ‘Family’ in their name.
As astute observers know, the word Family is regularly used to conceal extreme religious agendas, e.g., the Australian Family Association, Focus on the Family etc., and this turns out to be the case here.
Their very first ‘evidence’ is something of a giveaway. It’s a report prepared for the Australian Christian Lobby by Professor Parkinson of the University of Sydney, “For Kids Sake”. Really Long Link
Essentially, Parkinson’s report said that kids do best with a stable background, such as married couples. It made no judgements at all regarding same-sex marriages, even though some have claimed it does – something Parkinson himself was forced to deny.
As Tasmanian marriage equality advocate Rodney Croome pointed out at the time, “when we look more closely at the Parkinson Report we can see it is actually a sustained case for respecting and strengthening the bonds between same-sex partners and their children by allowing these partners to marry.” Really Long Link
The rest of the DFF data is similarly compromised. Michael Vagg, writing on The Conversation, concluded “No doctor, nurse, physio or in fact any science-based practitioner would accept a new treatment based on such a poorly argued presentation of research. . . . studies presented make no tenable case whatsoever that there are health risks to either the same-sex parents or their offspring.” Really Long Link
He added, “Doctors for the Family seem happy to completely ignore . . . the significant body of research which has already been done into gay parenting. The consensus view is that same-sex couples make no better or worse parents than any other type of family arrangements. “
So, shorn of their figleaves, who ARE these Doctors?
A brief search of the internet reveals some of the signatories are also part Medicine with Morality, which claims to be protecting "the drift of ethics away from moral absolutes." They have also petitioned the Australian government to try to limit women's healthcare options: Really Long Link
Now no-one would have cared two pins if they had had the honesty to bill themselves as a religious group, as the Guild of St Luke (Catholic Doctors of Queensland) did.
But when Doctors for the Family turned out to be a front for an unholy alliance of evangelical fundamentalist and right-wing Catholic doctors, their dishonesty caused a storm of protest online.
The Conscience Vote blog said “Doctors for the Family clearly attempted to deceive the Senate enquiry by misrepresenting themselves as a ‘health organisation’, rather than a religious group whose arguments are cherry-picked, distorted, and backed up by the flimsiest of ‘evidence’, all operating from a basis of religious dogma rather than science.” Really Long Link
In fact, there are whole raft of these deceptive organisations, purporting to be medical in character, which are Trojan horses for a religious agenda, as Chrys Stevenson has discovered Really Long Link
They go by such names Discovery Institute, Liberty of Conscience, Medicine with Morality, and are anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia.
This dishonesty is reprehensible, especially from doctors. They should have the courage of their convictions, especially when testifying before Parliament, and state openly that they will always privilege their personal religious convictions over and above the scientific evidence and the needs of their patients.
All this would be cause enough for concern in itself, but it gets worse.
One of the signatories to the Doctors for the Family’s deceptive submission is Prof Kuruvilla George.
Professor George is the Deputy Chief Psychiatrist of the state of Victoria, and was recently appointed by fellow devout Roman Catholic Attorney General Robert Clark as an Equal Opportunity Commissioner as well.
Just where does Prof George draw the line between his duty to treat his patients in accordance with the scientific evidence, and his commitment to his faith?
I fear for elderly gay and lesbian people who come under his care, for example: can he set aside his faith and care for and treat them with their best interests at heart, rather than those of his faith?
And how can someone of such intransigent religious views hope to act with the necessary impartiality required of a Human Rights Commissioner, charged with seeing that the rights of women, gays and lesbians are respected in accordance with the law?
It would appear that the Attorney General and the Chief Psychiatrist have put a fox in their henhouses.
It also raises the question of just how far the Attorney General has ‘evolved’ from his previously stated views on gays and lesbians.
Unlike Jeff Kennett and Barack Obama, Robert Clark has never made any statement to indicate he has learned anything since he said back in 1995 that “I believe homosexual practices form a destructive way of life, destructive to the individual and destructive also to other individuals who are brought into that way of life”
Given the opportunity to recant by The Age in 2005, he merely said “he was expressing an individual view at the time as permitted under the Liberal Party's constitution.” Really Long Link
It would be instructive to hear if he still holds those views. And who else agrees with him. Professor George, perhaps?
It seems we may have a whole den of foxes lurking behind the relatively benign facade of the Baillieu government.
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