Last week, the University of Sydney’s Catholic Society hosted a series of reasonably inflammatory events on campus, titled “Pornography: dangerous or delightful?”, “Men + Women = made for each other?” and “Misconceptions about contraception”.
These events, especially “Men + Women = made for each other?”, spurred some fairly hot campus debate, with many queer students (rightfully) denouncing that particular talk as homophobic and bigoted. And this wasn’t just from the title: the event’s speaker, James Parker, is known to have participated in, and endorsed, gay conversion therapy – a practice that’s illegal in a lot of places because of how harmful it can be to young queer people.
Despite the queer students’ best efforts, the event went ahead. The university was reticent to do anything about it, calling on the students’ union to take action. The union hadn’t funded the event or provided the location (it was in a society-owned tent on university lawns), so there was nothing it could do.
For an hour, Parker – under the guise of ‘loving’ gays (the whole Christian rhetoric of “You’re a sinner, but God loves everyone, therefore God loves you anyway”) – spread homophobic vitriol implying that same sex marriage is a lie sold to gay people, that these marriages will never be as fulfilling as heterosexual ones, that lots of gay people commit suicide because their gayness makes them sad, and further implied that his own homosexuality was a direct result of the abuse he experienced as a child.
Make no mistake, these sentiments are harmful. You can dress them up as much as you like (“I love gays because God does!”), make as many excuses as you like (“He didn’t attribute his heterosexuality to conversion therapy, just regular therapy”), but their position remains that who queers have chosen to love is fundamentally wrong, and they will be unhappy until they make the right choice – heterosexuality.
The people behind the events claimed that by pushing for these talks to be shut down, the queer students were silencing them and taking away their right to freedom of speech, as well as freedom of academic thought in such a hallowed place of learning.
To claim that shutting down such events is stifling freedom of speech is the most tired and frustrating argument that conservatives consistently use to perpetuate hateful views and argue their legitimacy.
For starters, Australians don’t have a constitutional right to freedom of speech. Even if we did, hate speech would be excluded from this. The difficulty here is proving that what Parker said is hate speech, given how dressed up in patronising ‘love’ it was.
Freedom of speech and freedom of academic thoughts as concepts do not give you the right to promote discrimination, bigotry, and factually, scientifically and medically incorrect schools of thought (the contraception talk particularly failed science and medicine too).
Freedom of academic thought is absolutely essential in a university, but arguing that gay people are sad because they’re gay (and not because of structural oppressions that lead them to be bullied, abused, assaulted, as well as less employable, and fuck, not even equal before the law in this country) wouldn’t even be passed in a first year sociology class.
University is about reading between the lines, seeing through the structures that have created knowledge in the past, to better understand the world around us. Events like this are in no way academic – in fact, they’re just really fucking stupid.
Sydney University photo courtesy Jason James/Flickr
This Week:
On Wednesday May 11, the May instalment of Yellow Wednesdays hits Secret Garden Bar, with music from Ben England, Vibe Positive and Andy Garvey, and a performance by Anna May Kirk.
Playwright Charles O’Grady’s new show, Telescope, opens this Thursday May 12 and runs until Saturday May 21 at Leichhardt Town Hall. It follows two parents after they learn their child is transgender. In a fun twist, both parents are played by genderqueer actors, who alternate the role of mother and father in different showings of the play.
Then on Friday May 13, Girlthing hits theImperial Hotel with a deep sea theme. Fitting, given the party will be in the venue’s basement. Given the new regulations at the Imperial, there’ll be a lot of security at this party, so be on your best behaviour.
