Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-09-16-Speech-3-226"
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"en.20090916.18.3-226"2
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"− Madam President, can I say, as a gay man, I am proud that this House and others are speaking out against this proposed law. This proposed law will clearly breach EU treaties on human rights, particularly Article 6, as well as the Employment Framework Directive and general policies on non-discrimination. It also, interestingly, breaches the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in that it encourages discrimination against young lesbians and gay people. So, whom does it protect, and from what?
The British Conservatives introduced in Great Britain a similar law in 1988. It was recognised then, and recognised now, that these laws lead to censorship and the promotion of discrimination and homophobia: discrimination and homophobia which destroys people’s lives and blights the souls of those who practise it. The proposed law has been condemned by NGOs, including the International Lesbian and Gay Association, the Council of Europe and Amnesty International, as well as others. It affects young lesbians and gay men – teachers, public officials – and could be used to prevent young people having access to any material – films, books, plays, works of art – created by a gay man or a lesbian. Are they going to try and stop young people studying the works of Plato, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams, Tchaikovsky and others, the music of Elton John, or idolising tennis greats such as Martina Navratilova? It will affect the very way young people and others speak, think and act. And why? Young people need education, not isolation; they need to understand the world in all its diversity and be taught respect for those who are different. The love of one human being for another is never lessened by gender or sexuality: it is love.
Lesbians and gay men are ordinary men and women made extraordinary by extremists’ preoccupation with our sex lives and the defamation that lesbians and gay men are a threat to society. That is a vile misrepresentation. Any civilised society is judged not by how it treats its majority but how it treats its minorities. So I say to Lithuanians and people across Europe: reject this dangerous step back to the past."@en1
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