The Guardian is terrified of One Nation, and believes the conservative Senator Malcolm Roberts is a soft target to whip up fear and smear with false accusations and slander.

I’ve published the above video with the questions and answers they’re quoting, along with some other ones which will trigger the radical Marxists at that blog. Watch and decide for yourself if they’ve been fair and reported his answers in good faith with the full context.

Below, I’ll provide the transcript of the same video, then quote their commentary. They also quoted me as if the facts I mentioned are scandalous. I’m so far right I believe in telling the Truth!

Their headline reads, “One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts ‘in two minds’ about whether gay people should be equal“.

Here’s the full exchange.

Caleb [08:45 in the above video] – “My question is to do with the recent donations set up by One Nation and Labor. Could you give us the details of that rather than sifting through the propaganda? Have you outraised Labor? And what is the implications of that in the next election?”

Senator Roberts – “Is this the $27 and $29 donation?”

Caleb – “Yes.”

Senator Roberts – “All I know is that James Ashby is very, very, he’s gifted. He’s bright. He’s honest. He’s straight. Well, straight in one way. But no, he’s a hell of a nice guy. He is very, very talented. He can do many things at once. He’s, I think it was his idea. He saw what Labor did and Labor was trying to put dirt on us by saying they need a massive war chest to stop us. So he said, okay, let’s use their own trick. So then Labor wanted, they didn’t believe we did it. And so we showed them the books through an externally independent audit and Labor’s not doing the same. So I can’t tell you much about Labor, but I can tell you that we, what are we up to? About 3.4 million? The initial target was one.

Sebastian [10:10 in the video] – “Hi, Malcolm. My name’s Sebastian. First, I just wanted to say I love what you guys are doing, heavily opposing mass immigration, fighting for freedom of speech and yourself in your speech earlier.

Senator Roberts – “Australia first. That’s it.”

Sebastian – “Pro-Christian, Australia first. It’s awesome. So I wanted to encourage you in that. But I do have a concern in my question as a Christian, which my friend made me aware of, and you might’ve actually kind of addressed it just then in that one. But my question is respectfully and as someone who really backs One Nation and what the party’s doing, is what should we as Christians think about the fact that One Nation’s chief of staff, campaign strategist, and Pauline’s key political advisor is James Ashby, who is a homosexual? There’s some allegations around him, which I know a lot of Christians would disagree with.”

Senator Roberts – “Right. Have you heard of the Bishop John Shelby Spong?”

Sebastian – “Sorry, say again?”

Senator Roberts – “Have you heard of Bishop John Shelby Spong, Sebastian?

Sebastian – “I haven’t.”

Senator Roberts – “American Bishop, retired I think, he might even be dead by now, but retired, Episcopalian, Anglican. He said that 100 years ago, women were looked upon as inferior to men and didn’t deserve the vote. He said, ‘We fixed that.’ He said ‘we’ as Western society. And he said, ‘Along came the 1960s, and we thought blacks were inferior.’ He said, ‘We fixed that.’ And he said, ‘Now we’ve got to fix the homosexuals.’ Now I’m in two minds about that, so I haven’t got a firm position on it myself, other than I don’t, I’m not homosexual and I can’t, I can’t understand it. Okay.

But there have been a number of homosexuals who are very, very prominent in many, many fields throughout history. Okay. So all I know is that in this environment, James is not morally sound; but from what I’ve seen of him, his honesty, his integrity, his ability – he is sound. So if you pardon me, I haven’t made up my mind, but there are a number of people in society in very prominent positions in the arts, sports, science, business, politics, who are homosexual, and I don’t think we can afford to ban them. So it’s difficult.”

How I interpreted that.

Senator Roberts explained that he thinks homosexual behaviour should not disqualify people from contributing to society, and that the costs would be too great. He specifically cited what he knows of James Ashby as evidence supporting that he is personally sound. He explicitly argued against banning homosexual people. To the question of “What should Christians think about Pauline’s key political advisor being James Ashby,” he ultimately answered, “It’s difficult.”

How the Guardian interpreted that.

Shrouding their own “progressive” agenda with a quote from the radically anti-democratic, anti-Christian political lobby group, Equality Australia, they printed:

“It was ‘genuinely shocking’ that a One Nation senator would talk about ‘banning’ people. As though something so incompatible with a democratic society could be an acceptable option. The idea that One Nation or its senators think that this could be an idea that’s on the table, or even a matter of legitimate debate, is incredibly chilling.”

Except nothing of the sort was said or intended, was it. Senator Roberts explicitly said, “I don’t think we can afford to ban them.” He didn’t affirm it as an acceptable option, or on the table.

What’s “incredibly chilling” is the way gay radical activists like Equality Australia believe in delegitimising and criminalising free speech and sincerely formed and held convictions. One Nation don’t hate Australians with unapproved opinions, which is the real problem for a political lobby group wanting to wield the power of government to punish dissent from their dogmatically held beliefs.

Equality Australia rub their hands with glee every time Lyle Shelton has a setback in his nearly seven-year ordeal defending his right to assert what used to be common sense: that drag queens aren’t suitable role models for tender aged children. They seek to effectively ban Christian schools from existing, by forcing them to hire people who reject and contradict Christian beliefs about sexual ethics. That is actually “incompatible with a democratic society”.

The Guardian had no rebuttal for this

The organiser of the conference, Dave Pellowe, said in the same forum that “loud, screaming activists” had held American medical health professions to ransom “until they capitulated to delisting same-sex attraction as something that needed treatment, as an illness”.

Here’s what I actually said – and it’s the historical facts.

“The health industry – psychiatry, psychology included – has absolutely been invaded, infiltrated and captured by Marxists and critical theorists who are anti-human. I know – again, I have the history and the research that the American Psychiatry Association – which was protested and stormed and conferences of medical health professionals were held ransom essentially by loud screaming activists in their conferences until they capitulated to delisting same-sex attraction as something that needed treatment as an illness.”

If The Guardian intends to scoff at the suggestion that their “progressive” ideology could capture supposedly objective medical institutions, they need to read some history.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – psychiatry’s authoritative classification system for identifying and diagnosing mental disorders. DSM-II, its second edition, was published in 1968 and classified homosexuality among the “sexual deviations”.

Beginning in 1970, gay activists deliberately targeted APA conventions, disrupting professional sessions and confronting psychiatrists. The campaign continued through successive conventions. Frank Kameny famously seized a microphone at the 1971 convention and denounced psychiatry as “the enemy incarnate”. The explicit political objective was to force the profession to stop classifying homosexuality as psychiatric pathology.

This pressure mattered. Historical accounts describe the eventual decision as emerging from an “acrimonious debate … initiated by lobbying efforts by gay activists.” Another contemporary participant later described it as the climax of a “sociopolitical struggle”, rather than simply a decision reached after detached scientific deliberation.

Robert Spitzer became the central psychiatric figure in the change. Rather than discovering some new biological fact about homosexuality, the debate turned substantially upon what should count as mental disorder in the first place. Spitzer argued that disorders characteristically caused subjective distress or generalised impairment in functioning; because homosexuality did not necessarily do either, homosexuality per se should not qualify.

In December 1973 the APA Board removed homosexuality per se from DSM-II and substituted “Sexual Orientation Disturbance” – meaning people distressed by, conflicted about, or wishing to change their homosexuality could still be diagnosed and treated.

Opposing psychiatrists then forced the extraordinary spectacle of a membership referendum over a psychiatric diagnosis. Of roughly 20,000 APA members, only about half voted: 5,854 supported the change, 3,810 opposed it and 367 abstained.

And here’s the remarkable postscript.

In 1981, Spitzer himself – the psychiatrist central to the delisting – published a reassessment in the APA’s own American Journal of Psychiatry. His conclusion was striking: the fundamental issue was:

“a value judgment about heterosexuality, rather than a factual dispute about homosexuality.”

So when I say loud, screaming activists stormed psychiatric conferences and subjected the profession to sustained political pressure until homosexuality was delisted, that isn’t conspiracy theory. The protests happened. The lobbying happened. The diagnostic criteria changed. The bombarded membership literally voted on it.

And the architect of the change later acknowledged that the underlying dispute concerned values, not simply scientific facts.

It is only remarkable to authoritarian Marxists like those at The Guardian blog and Equality Australia that anyone should have traditional, Christian, biological family values.

References:
Spitzer’s 1981 paper — PubMed
Spitzer’s 1981 paper — American Journal of Psychiatry
APA Publishing — DSM-II 1973 diagnostic change
APA Foundation — original 1974 referendum and vote totals
Cambridge University Press — Spitzer’s account of the controversy
Cambridge — account describing the sociopolitical struggle
Review of the history and psychiatric classification evidence

Dave Pellowe is the founder of 'Church And State', a nationwide ministry equipping Christians to be public salt and light: redeeming the culture and advocating for righteousness in government. Dave teaches Christians how God’s unchanging Word answers all the controversial questions. Specialising in what God says about complex ethical and social issues, Dave Pellowe is a guest speaker at churches, youth groups and Christian schools, TV, radio and podcast interviews and other secular and Christian forums where love of Truth and honest thinking are valued. [more]

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