Under the guise of freedom of speech, defending religious freedom and “letting kids be kids”, LGBTI people have faced an assault from recently anointed prime minister and homophobe in chief Scott Morrison. 

He went on 2GB radio earlier this month to gabber with cretin Alan Jones, discussing the supposedly “skin curling” Victorian high school program teaching students about “building respectful relationships”. 

Parents beware! This seemingly innocuous consciousness-raising program, designed to prevent family violence, is cultural Marxism in sheep’s clothing. 

Jones claimed the program would include role playing of sexually deviant teens, including “Megan”. “We’re told that Megan is 17, she lives in the city and works in the local cafe. She’s had 15 sexual partners and describes herself as bisexual. And these girls in class are told to role model these particular people!” 

Morrison said that “Megan” makes his skin curl, and assured listeners: “It’s not happening in the school I send my kids to, and that’s one of the reasons I send them there”.

According to Fairfax, Morrison promised at the end of 2017 – a year in which tens of thousands took to the streets to celebrate marriage equality, a historic win for LGBTI rights – that he would fight against “discrimination and mockery” of Christians and would enact “preventative regulation and legislation”. 

Considering the obvious lack of discrimination against Hillsong Church devotees, Morrison’s repeated calls for greater religious freedom are yet another coded message to his bigoted base. For Morrison and his supporters, freedom of religion means a law to permit homophobes to refuse service to queer people. As Catherine McGregor asked in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Will the mythical army of persecuted bakers and wedding planners also refuse service to adulterers, thieves, divorcees, usurers, women who have terminated pregnancies and other categories of sinner? Perhaps a helpful sign clarifying which categories of sinners will not be served may avoid needless confrontations.”

During another interview, Morrison was asked by 3AW’s Neil Mitchell about his position on gay conversion therapy – long discredited pseudoscientific attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, considered by some doctors to be a form of torture. 

Conversion practices are carried out by evangelical churches and ministries across Australia, taking the form of exorcisms, prayer groups or counselling disguised as pastoral care. They’re also done by some religious schools.

But Morrison refused to condemn it. “It’s not an issue I’m focused on at all”, he said. “I think people should make their own choices about their own lives.”

The hypocrisy of the right in crying about free speech while demanding to have a say over the sexual and gender identities of children is stunning but predictable. 

Morrison begs on twitter to “let kids be kids” and describes a program to help teachers identify transgender children as “gender whispering”. This is blowback from a sore loser who hates the idea of LGBTI equality. Those who fought for our civil rights last year must be organised to take on the bigotry of the sore losers.