‘Gay stolen generation’ GP up for Senate seat

The Queensland GP who compared gay surrogacy to the stolen generation and claimed ‘gay people could stop being gay’ is among a dozen candidates who may replace Queensland senator Barnaby Joyce at the next election.

The Courier Mail reported Thursday that Dr David van Gend had passed the vetting process for the Liberal National Party (LNP) for Joyce’s safe Queensland spot since announcing he would be contesting the NSW Lower House seat of New England.

In 2011, Dr van Gend wrote an opinion piece for the Courier Mail comparing gay couples who used surrogacy to start a family to forcibly depriving children of a mother.

“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,” he wrote.

“The offence is the same; only the justification changes. 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.”

He also wrote “a black person cannot stop being black, but a gay person can stop being gay.”

“Homosexual people are able, where motivated, to modify unwanted homosexual attractions and even achieve complete transformation to a heterosexual orientation, as documented in peer-reviewed clinical papers, such as that published by American psychiatrist Robert Spitzer in 2003.”

Last year, Spitzer discredited and apologised for the highly controversial research in an interview with American Prospect magazine.

Spitzer surveyed 200 ‘ex-gay’ patients and released results suggesting gay people could change their sexual orientation under rare circumstances

“In retrospect, I have to admit I think the critiques are largely correct,” he said.

“The findings can be considered evidence for what those who have undergone ex-gay therapy say about it, but nothing more.”