State-sponsored child abuse

By now it’s pretty clear that, as Lady Gaga sings, we are ‘Born This Way’. The evidence is more than strong enough to declare the argument won.

We are part of the normal mammalian sexuality spectrum, not the result of something that ‘goes wrong’. If it were, we would have been bred out long ago.

That leaves those still clinging to the delusion that sexuality is a ‘choice’ with nowhere to go. Attempts to change sexual orientation permanently have always failed, often tragically, causing severe anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, self-harm and suicide.

Yet the more the evidence piles up, the more savagely our cornered opponents fight the truth. They cling to the lie of ‘choice’ to justify their discrimination.

Wayne Besen, of ‘Truth Wins Out’, says they are “fighting back tooth and nail, getting more shrill, getting angrier, and they will not give up”.

And like cigarette manufacturers who find it increasingly difficult to sell their toxic products in Western markets, they export their anti-gay cause to less sophisticated places like Eastern Europe and Africa. Their greatest success to date has been in Uganda, where the enactment of the death penalty for homosexuality has only been postponed after a huge global effort.

Besen says, “Their whole goal is to create a situation where there are anti-gay countries all around the world surrounding the United States and Western Europe.”

This battle is now being fought in Australian schools.

Evangelical Anglicans like Access Ministries, under the twin covers of chaplaincy and ‘Christian Religious Instruction’ (not, you will note, education), are being given taxpayers’ money to damage our children.

They teach them that same-sex attraction is ‘not part of God’s plan’. Some are no doubt kindly, sincere and well-meaning individuals. Some teach them that homosexuality leads to an eternity in hell. Some say they must be possessed by demons.

Let it be said plainly — to teach children that diverse genders, sexualities and attractions are anything other than normal, natural and to be celebrated, is child abuse.

Their ‘religious’ teaching is nothing more than sanctified ignorance and prejudice. It legitimises bullying and feeds low self-esteem, depression and self-harm. Sometime, it kills.

And you and I are paying them to do this, through our taxes.

And then we pay again to deal with the epidemic of entirely avoidable mental ill-health. While we mourn those who did not survive the onslaught and are no longer around to be rescued.

Evangelical Christians are not alone in this. Catholics, Orthodox Jews, strict Muslims, and, I have no doubt, other snake-oil peddlers such as Mormons and Scientologists, are guilty too. It is time to stop subsidising these dangerously deluded people and get them away from the children.