Australia’s deputy PM currently has no view on anti-gay therapies

Australia’s deputy PM currently has no view on anti-gay therapies
Image: Image: Michael McCormack / Facebook.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has used his first major speech as Nationals leader to declare he has no view on so-called conversion therapies for LGBTI people.

“I will be perfectly honest… I have not really looked into it enough to really make a view on it one way or the other,” McCormack yesterday told the National Press Club, The Guardian has reported.

“I certainly will, but it’s not something that I have really explored.”

Homophobic and transphobic ‘conversion’ therapies have condemned by numerous bodies including the United Nations and the Australian Psychological Society.

Conservative branches of the Victorian Liberal Party had proposed a motion calling for more access to anti-LGBTI counselling for children, but it was this week shut down by the state president.

McCormack appeared to play off the importance of the issue, saying people were “more interested in making sure there are jobs there, making sure there’s downward pressure on the cost of living”.

He said he was uninformed on anti-gay therapy because he had only been in the deputy job “a little over six weeks”.

McCormack has a long-standing interest in LGBTI issues, having penned a series of editorials in the 1990s during his time as a newspaper editor.

He then called gay people “sordid” and “unnatural”, blamed them for the AIDS crisis, and called for mandatory HIV testing.

Since entering politics he has repeatedly apologised for the columns.

Advocates raised concerns about McCormack’s views on LGBTI people when he became Deputy Prime Minister in February.

“I have grown and learnt not only to tolerate but to accept all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, or any other trait or feature which makes each of us different and unique,” McCormack said last year.

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4 responses to “Australia’s deputy PM currently has no view on anti-gay therapies”

  1. Perhaps he should ponder this: what if I diagnosed being a conservative as a form of mental illness that could be treatable with electric shock therapy? In other words, a bit of empathy would not go astray – even if he himself is not gay.

  2. Yes it’s more dog-whistling about anti-gay therapy and that’s not cool but the flipside is now there is serious discussion being had about criminalising purported conversion therapies as a form of abuse, just as other quackery has also been criminalised or regarded as abuse over previous decades.

    I also love the way the headline here has to specify “Australia’s Deputy PM” because if they’d written Michael McCormack nobody knows who he is. There’s an irony to his not having a position on this issue – Australia has no position on Michael McCormack other than “who?”

  3. To any reasonable thinking human being, a ‘therapy’ that is designed to change someone from being a homosexual to a heterosexual would indicate that being homosexual is a disease, Mr McCormack!

    The fact that you attest to having no view on such a ‘therapy’ strongly indicates that you believe homosexuality is a disease, which might be amenable to cure.

    This position is consistent with the view on gay people you so disturbingly articulated and telegraphed 25 years ago in your series of homophobic Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser editorials.

    Where do the LNP find these intellectual giants?

    Go to church on Sunday Mr McCormack and everything will be alright.

  4. Of course he won’t commit himself!
    Why?
    Because he is scared stiff all those red-neck bogans Isn’t that all of them?) in the National Party would not allow him to say anything which would oppose these sorts of Sadistic Therapies which are, to their ever-lasting shame, offered by so-called, self-styled “Christians” and other bigots.
    At the same time, given his homophobic history, he is probably every bit as scared shitless that all those GLTBIQ VOTERS in his Electorate would gang up and vote against him at the next Federal Election and if there is one thing politicians loathe above all else it is being thrown out of their grossly over-paid, cushy so-called “Job” in Canberra. Gone would be the salary, the Free Travel, the money they get if they have to stay over night in Canberra – even though they stay in a flat/house owned by a family member! Gone would be all that extra money they get for sitting on those talkfests: Parliamentary Committees.
    Let’s face it, McCormack is no different to any of the others. He, like them has but ONE Interest: Himself.