An open letter to the Victorian premier

An open letter to the Victorian premier

DOUG POLLARD

Dear Ted. I think you’re a decent bloke with a strong sense of what’s fair and right. I sense you’re impatient with ideology, and more at home with common sense and practical policies.

During the election you promised $4m to tackle the epidemic of depression, self-harm and suicide among young LGBTIQ people. And I’m happy to see you came good on that promise. It makes sense.

But you’re also pumping money into programs fuelling that epidemic.

That doesn’t.

It’s hard enough navigating adolescence when you’re healthy, good-looking, heterosexual, and reasonably affluent, with supportive friends, teachers and family. As you would know.

But what if you’re not? What if your developing sexual feelings are towards members of your own sex?

And then what if you have a religious instruction teacher who teaches that those feeling are sinful? What if the school chaplain counsels you to suppress your desires, and says the only honourable choice is to deny yourself love and remain alone your whole life?

And having been taught those notions, the other students in your school see nothing wrong in bullying you.

But you can’t tell your parents, because you think they’ll hate a gay son or daughter. So you try to be straight, dating members of the opposite sex, lying to your friends and family. You’re completely alone and constantly terrified you’ll slip up.

It’s no wonder kids crack up, self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, become depressed, and harm themselves, perhaps even fatally.

Now at least there will be $4m to help put some of these damaged kids back together again. Thank you. But 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.

That religion deals in unsupported belief, not verifiable facts, and the facts say something quite different about sexual orientation or gender identity.

So why is your Government funding closed-minded, single-faith ‘evangelising’ on children by chaplains and religious instructors?

Why is your Government giving special rights and privileges to those who would deny GLBTIQ people jobs, homes, services on the basis of their unsupported prejudices, disguised as ‘faith’?

Does it make any sense to have your Attorney-General and your Education Minister spend thousands creating misery, and then have your mental health and social services ministers spend millions more trying to make it better? Of course it doesn’t. And as a sensible, practical, compassionate man, you know it.

So please take courage and do the right thing. Thank you.

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