‘Gay stolen generation’ claim dismissed
Queensland Association for Healthy Communities (QAHC) general manager Paul Martin has dismissed claims made by a Queensland GP labelling Australia’s gay marriage ban a “just and necessary discrimination” to ensure same-sex couples don’t have children.
Martin told the Star Observer he did not want to give the views more air time and said they were deliberately provocative.
“He says this all the time… his comments are barking mad, ignore him,” Martin said.
“It’s tax payers who pay his salary and why a GP can still be registered in Australia and make those comments is beyond me.”
In The Courier Mail opinion piece today, under the headline ‘Brace for a new stolen generation’, Dr David van Gend likened gay couples having children to the Indigenous Stolen Generations “of children forcibly deprived of a mother”.
Van Gend, spokesman for the Family Council of Queensland, also cited US research to claim homosexuality “is a potentially treatable psychological condition”.
Discussing comparisons between racism and opposition to same-sex couples or gay marriage, van Gend wrote, “a black person cannot stop being black, but a gay person can certainly stop being gay, as a large number of formerly gay men and women around the world have demonstrated”.
“The only true analogy with racism is to compare the Aboriginal Stolen Generations with Labor’s proposed ‘gay stolen generation’ of children forcibly deprived of a mother.
“This time round the justification for separating a baby from the love of its mother is that it meets the emotional needs of homosexual men.”
In an opposing piece – added later – Southern Cross University associate professor of media studies Dr Karen Brooks said Australia should move to allow for same-sex marriage.
“Marriage is not a gay/straight issue any more,” Brooks said.
“It’s about human rights to access, benefits, legitimacy, recognition, and public acknowledgement of mutual love.”
An Australian Medical Association Queensland spokeswoman told the Star Observer van Gend is an AMA member, but was speaking in his capacity as a Family Council of Queensland spokesman.
UPDATED
As sad as it makes me, Gillard is far superior to the alternative when it comes to gay marriage.
Australians don’t directly vote for the prime minister, they are nominated by elected (and unelected) party officials.
me being a ways away from OZ can someone here kindly inform me as to how Australian politics work when it comes to electing a new prime minister? It seems to me that if Marriage Equality is ever going to become the law of the land than we desperately need to remove ms.(Mrs.)whatever Girard from office.
The Courier Mail is a voice for consertive Queensland, just like the right wing radio talk back stations in the southern states.I suggest people read the Brisbane times online newspaper here for qld news: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au
The reason Queensland is full of right wing weirdos is….
It’s The-Buckle-of-the-Bible-Belt. The Deep North.
Many fundamentalist sects were born here, “The Little Pebble” Joh-Bonkers_Bananas raised his chooks here.
Many of them are related to each other. See tin can Bay.
I’ve always thought it was the Rum and the heat. Then there is that strange chemical in Mangoes that turns everyone Troppo, Mango madness it’s called!
Put your grade three school cap on to read the anti-gay, Murdock press posing as a newspaper.
Ex Premier Russell Cooper, and his National Party mates wanted to bring in the whips and stocks for Gay a cure, and stated “that Gay’s would come swarming over the border if the Labor Party got into power.
I always send my Xmas presents in a genuine Queensland, brown paper bag in memory of those National Party bastards.
Just sayin….Independent Candidate, Campbell Newman and his Hill-Billy, Gay hater party, has opened an office here in Ashgrove, Brisbane.
Can you please send up to Darkest Brisbane, the Blessed Nuns of Perpetual Indulgence to perform one of those Demon exit things that they are famous for. Exorcism. That’s it.
While they are doing that, I will sing Gloria in Excelsis backwards.
As a former straight person I object to the notion that I could be turned straight again …. take heart LGBTQI people out there, we are rattling them on this issue. Let’s see same sex marriage through all the way!
As a GP I am appalled that this man has been allowed to use his degree as a crutch for his clear and blatant ignorance and bigotry
I pity his patients and openly encourage gay and lesbian patients to avoid this man like the plague.
I don’t get the feeling we will get the treatment we deserve there.
One week the ALP vote to back gay marriage in Qld, the next we get this nutjob.
Let’s call it even
I am sure this GP would lose his registration if he dared to talk like that to a patient. I just had lunch with some other Doctors wifes and we had a good laugh. We do not use tax payers money for Witch Doctors under Medicare. We use it for facts when treating people, and it is illegal for this doctor to dare to use his “magic” on a patient and bill Medicare. My husband is a medical doctor and a Director of Medical Services, I am sure this GP would be sacked if he dared to say such a hate rant in a public hospital. This GP of course offers no facts. If he truly believed his own bullshit, he would close his clinic and have a sign on the door saying “Go and pray and get better”. But instead he does not do this, and I have no doubt delights in taking his $200k salary. He would not be first GP to suffer madness. I recall a GP in Tasmania who cut off his wife’s head as she was nagging him.
Further the College of Psychiatry in Australia and New Zealand contradicts his bogus claims. But they have to base evidence on facts, on science, something that to me seems to be foreign to this GP. The clinical definition I believe for this GP is Homophobia.
Scientist can genetically replicate gay fruit flies, and lesbian mice, but this also contradicts the good Doctor. Perhaps he should be careful, as on the farm we had some Lesbian cows, they were given full equality and produced just as much milk as other cows. But they could not read his version of Christianity, and the cows could not fly either.
So I will not lose of this great tool. If you are a patient of his, go the Medical Board, then the Health Service Commission and complain. Bring a witness to your appointment.
We can always wire Dr Van Gender up to zer power supply, and zap him into a homosexual.
This US research is obviously written by those fruit-cake fundamentalists.
Why is Queensland so full of right-wing weirdos? Do all the normal people emigrate when they reach the age of rationality or what?!!