The article below reveals how the Democrats and Labor senators plan to significantly change the understanding and acceptance that Australians have of the "traditional heterosexual" family unit.
It is extremely disturbing and highlights just how far "political correctness" has gone with the blessing of Labor and Democrat Senators. You will note that we have been "shielded" by the mainstream media from this controversial debate.
Can you afford to vote for them in the Senate - prevent this Bill vote ONE NATION in the Senate.
by Richard Egan - from News Weekly - January 10th 1998
The Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee has, in a report signed by its Chair, Jim McKiernan, given a firm "thumbs up" to the Sexuality Discrimination Bill. In fact, the McKiernan report recommends changes to the Bill that would even further advance the agenda of the homosexual lobby.
When Democrat Sid Spindler first proposed the Bill in 1995, there was to be no exemption for religious bodies at all. After receiving a flood of objections Spindler backed down and included a fairly narrow exemption for religious bodies.
McKiernan has recommended narrowing this exemption even further to exclude any activities of religious bodies that receive Commonwealth funding. This would apply to religious schools, hospitals etc.. and require them to choose between employing homosexuals and transsexuals and tolerating open homosexuality among students or forego Commonwealth funding.
This is the most serious attack on the religious school system since the DOGS case sought to deprive them of funding. The McKiernan report essentially says "violate your religious beliefs about homosexuality or go broke".
The McKiernan report does not seriously consider objections to sexuality discrimination legislation. Where it cites opponents of the proposed Bill (such as the Australian Family Association and the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Focus on Family etc..) it does so only to disagree with them or, worse still, to use their submissions as evidence of the existence of the very "homophobia" and discrimination which the Bill is designed to outlaw.
The McKiernan report endorses the draconian ban on free speech about homosexuality in Clause 26 of the Bill, which prohibits expressing "severe ridicule" about homosexuals or transsexuals. It also goes further by prohibiting "harassment", defined to include anything likely to offend or insult a homosexual and by making it unlawful to refuse to acknowledge the preferred gender of a transsexual. If a bloke says he's a sheila, then you break the law if you say he is a bloke!
"Harassment" is also defined to include a refusal to "accept bisexuality as a distinct sexuality". This recommendation mandates the acceptance of an ideological position on bisexuality and represents the extent to which the McKiernan report is an open exercise in sexual engineering and thought control.
Intent is held by the McKiernan report to be irrelevant in an allegation of discrimination. Discrimination, like beauty, it seems is in the eye of the beholder. In this case the complainant.
Similarly, the report recommends a prohibition, when making employment decisions, on taking into account any manner of dress which may be suggestive of a particular sexuality. So employers will just have to hire a bloke who turns up for work in drag or in full leathers and chains with exposed buttocks.
All couples the same:
The report also gives a ringing endorsement to the legal recognition as equal to male-female couples or male homosexual and lesbian couples as well as couples where one or both persons are "transgender". While recognising that the Marriage Act may be temporarily exempt from this requirement, other Commonwealth laws would have to be amended or interpreted to reflect this profound change. Through the provisions of the Sexual Discrimination Act 1984 which deals with "marital status" this new recognition of homosexual couples would give them full access to IVF and to adoption.
Senator McKiernan was unable to discover any problem with the constitutionality of the Bill, although former Attorney-General Michael Lavarche had said in 1995 that it was unconstitutional.
Attached to the 232 page McKiernan report are four documents from other committee members. Senator Helen Coonan (Liberal, NSW) expresses herself as generally in favour of sexuality discrimination law, but she thinks the proposed Commonwealth Bill may unnecessarily overlap with existing state and territory legislation.
Senator Bob Browne (Greens, Tasmania) predictably thinks the Bill does not go far enough, especially in failing to recognise the more fluid variety of transgendered persons who can't or don't want to be identified as being of either gender! He apparently wants it to be unlawful to treat them as either man or as a woman! Senator Brown seriously misquotes the submission by the Australian Conference of Catholic Bishops, claiming their endorsement of the proposition that same-sex couples should be recognised at least to the extent that de-facto heterosexual couples are recognised. Their submission did no such thing.
Senator Bill O'Chee (Nationals, Queensland) and Eric Albetz (Liberals, Tasmania) co-signed a "Response by Coalition Senators" which raised some general concerns about discrimination legislation and objected in particular to the role of transsexuals in gender-specific sport, the singling-out of sexuality-based violence as a specific offence and the precluding of the religious exemption for religious bodies in receipt of Commonwealth funding. (One page of their response is inexplicably missing from the volume, so they may have criticised other aspects of the Bill as well). Senator Abetz also appended some personal comments reporting the experiences and views of former homosexuals and people who had undergone transsexual surgery later deeply regretted. Their advice was that the legislation not proceed.
The Australian Democrats have stated that they will reintroduce the Sexuality Discrimination Bill when the Senate resumes in March 1998. They will adopt the more extensive McKiernan version of the Bill.
While the Bill is unlikely to pass the Senate before the 1998 election there is no doubt that the McKiernan report has significantly advanced the cause of the homosexual lobby through its unqualified endorsement of so much of its radical agenda.