The Zuber Report: Radical Feminism defeats itself in the European Parliament

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D. | March 17, 2014

The easiest victory is when your adversaries cannibalize each other. Such a thing happened in last week’s plenary session of the European Parliament, where the supporters of two different versions of a radical-feminist “initiative report” neutralized each other, which finally paved the way for the best of all possible outcomes: neither of the two texts was adopted.

I admit that the whole thing appeared rather late on our radar screens, so that I wasn’t able to report on this earlier. The scenaripo was similar to that of the defeated “Estrela-Report”. Once again, a radical draft for a (legally non-binding) has emanated from the Parliament’s ominous Committee on Women’s Rights (FEMM), which is something like a sheltered workshop for radical feminists in the EP. Given that the radical elements are more or less amongst themselves in that committee, they are able to draft the most extremist policy papers, which then are tabled and voted in the Parliament’s plenary.

Ines Cristina Zuber. When Communists speak of human rights, they mean communism, not human rights.

This time, it was a report on equality between women and men in the European Union, drafted by Ines Cristina Zuber, a member of Portugal’s hard-core Communist Party.

Her draft is yet another glaring example of how nowadays communists and other radical politicians have appropriated the vocabulary of human rights to embellish their anti-human-rights agenda: the draft called inter alia for the recognition of “right to voluntary termination of pregnancy”, the legal recognition of same-sex “marriages”, the introduction of compulsory “gender education” at schools, and the complete elimination from all school textbooks of any suggestion that a women could find fulfilment in her role as a mother, or a care-giver.

The text expresses not only a deep-rooted hatred against the institution of marriage and family, but it also negates the rights of parents to be the primary educators of their children, the right of children to be raised by their parents, and the right to life for unborn human being. Perhaps the most typically “Communist” feature is the call for gender-based quota systems in private enterprises and in politics. In other words, enterprises should not be free to select managers solely on the basis of their qualification, and citizens should not be free to elect for political offices whomever they want, but management positions and political mandates should be allocated according to quotas. With such a request, the draft report frontally attacks the fundamental right to property and the foundational principles of democratic government. Paradoxically, it does so in the name of human rights.

This dose of Communism was too much even for the European People’s Party, which despite having absorbed quite a bit of feminist/homosexualist ideology over the last few years, did not want to lend its full and unlimited support to Mrs. Zuber’s ultra-radical draft. It therefore tabled an alternative text. But that text, despite being less radical, was still full of absurdities: like the Zuber draft, it was based on a narrow-minded feminist ideology, failed to recognize the unique contribution of stable marriages and families for the common good of society, and pushed for gender quotas. In other words, it was just a downgraded version of the Zuber draft, not a real alternative to it. It really seems that the EPP have given up all the moral and intellectual stances for which they were elected.

At some very late moment in time, civil society became aware of what was going on, and the courageous NGO CitizenGO launched an online petition on the internet asking MEPs to vote both against the Zuber Report and the alternative EPP draft. Within a very short stretch of time, that petition was supported by more than 50.000 citizens.

But at the end what happened was the following: the EPP draft was the first to be voted – but, expecting that the ultra-radical Zuber draft might stand a chance of being adopted in toto – the Communists, Socialists, and Greens voted against it. So did some of the more conservative MEPS, so that the (more moderate, but still bad) EPP draft was rejected. However, the EPP took had its revenge when the Zuber draft was put to vote, which as a result was also rejected. The winners of the day were those who considered that the interest of women was not promoted by either of the two drafts, and that therefore neither should be adopted.

It was a narrow and lucky victory. We should be happy about it – but we should work in particular with the EPP to make sure that human rights language is not used in the European Parliament to promote Communist anti-human-rights policies.

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