Doug PollardAn Open Letter to Ted Baillieu
Dear Ted,
I hope you don’t mind me addressing you informally, but we have met, and I thought then, and I think still, that you’re a decent sort of bloke with a strong sense of what’s fair and right. You also struck me as someone who gets impatient with impractical, ideologically-driven policies, who is more at home with what’s commonsense, practical and efficient.
So I’m rather puzzled by the way in which one part of your administration is pouring money into creating problems that another part of your administration is pouring even more money into trying to solve.
Let me join the dots for you. During the election campaign you promised $4m to address the epidemic – and there is no other word for it, it’s quite horrific – of depression, self-harm and suicide among young same-sex attracted and gender-diverse people.
You understood, and agreed, that this was a major problem, and it needed major resources to combat it. And I’m very happy to see that the money is there is the state budget, exactly as promised. Thank you.
Now I would have thought, seeing that you are a practical and pragmatic sort of bloke, that you would also have been interested in WHY so many young people from the GLBTIQ community get depressed, hurt themselves, abuse alcohol and drugs, And even sometimes top themselves.
And it doesn’t take much to discover the reasons.
It’s hard enough navigating adolescence even if you’re healthy, good-looking and heterosexual, from a reasonably affluent background, with supportive friends, teachers and a stable family. As you would know.
But what if you’re not? What if, for example, you find that as your sexual feelings develop, they’re directed at members of your own sex?
Perhaps you are unlucky enough to have a Religious Instruction teacher who teaches that God’s plan is for men to marry women, and that people who feel sexually attracted to their own gender are bad people.
Perhaps you go to see a school chaplain, who counsels you that, while Jesus loves you, he does not love your sin, and so you ought to try to suppress your desires. That the only right and proper choice for you is to deny yourself love and remain single and unsatisfied your whole life long.
Perhaps that teacher and that chaplain are telling all the other students in your school the same stories, so that when your fellow students notice that you are different – and kids are really good at spotting difference – they feel quite justified in shunning you, or even bullying you.
And you can’t tell your parents, because they would be horrified. They don’t want a gay son or daughter. So you start dating members of the opposite sex, pretending to be heterosexual, lying to your friends and family. You’re completely alone and constantly terrified you’ll slip up and give away your secret.
It’s no wonder that under those sorts of pressures, lots of kids crack up, self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, become depressed, harm themselves, perhaps even fatally.
Now at least there will be $4m to help pick up the pieces and put some of these kids back together again.But let's stop creating any more of them, please.
Wouldn’t it be better not to break them in the first place? Wouldn’t it be better to have non-judgemental counsellors in schools to tell them – and their parents - the truth? That their feelings are perfectly normal and there is nothing wrong with them.
Wouldn’t it be better to teach them that, yes, some people may believe that same-sex attraction is wrong, but that in the 21st century we don’t have to pander to the prejudices of a tribe of Bronze Age Middle Eastern shepherds? That other people in other religions believe quite different things, and no one religion has a monopoly on truth. That religion deals in unsupported belief, not verifiable facts, which say something quite different about their sexual orientation or gender identity.
So why, then, is your government pouring petrol on the blaze that is burning up our young people, by funding closed-minded, single-faith, arguably illegal ‘evangelising’ by chaplains and religious instructors?
Why is your government giving aid and comfort to those who deny GLBTIQ people jobs, homes, services on the basis of their unsupported prejudices, disguised as ‘faith’?
If you amend equal opportunities law as you propose, you will be giving your seal of approval to same-sex couples in long-term relationships being denied community health counselling services because the counsellors oppose same-sex relationships.
You’ll be giving your personal seal of approval to students at religious secondary schools bullying their gay classmates. You’ll be backing the schools when, rather than disciplining the bullies, they expel the gay students.
You’ll be making life worse for gays and lesbians long after school, too. Many will force themselves to marry someone of the opposite sex, and have children, only for their marriages to fail in the end, with all the damage that entails to their spouses and children. Not to mention creating a great deal of wholly unnecessary and avoidable misery, and yet more demands on health, welfare and social services..
Now I ask you, as a reasonable and practical man, does it make any sense to have your Attorney-General and your Education Minister spend thousands of dollars pouring on petrol and fanning the flames, so that your mental health and social services ministers have to spend millions trying to douse the blaze? It’s self-evident that a penny spent on prevention saves a pound spent on cure. It’s simple common sense. And you strike me as a commonsense man.
So please, Ted, even though this is the eleventh hour, think again. Stand up for what is right, rather than what is politically expedient. And don’t tell me it would mean breaking an election commitment. You’ve already done that when you realised what you’d promised just wasn’t sensible or practical. Nor is this. Leave Equal Opportunities law alone. Don’t mess with the Human Rights Charter. Pull the funding from Access Ministries.
We need the $4m to cure the damage that's been done to date. But please stop creating more problems we'll need even more money to solve in the future. Thanks.
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