European Parliament’s gay lobby squeamish over critical questions…
By J.C. von Krempach, J.D. | January 25, 2012
A Member of the European Parliament has tabled a number of Written Questions concerning the European Commission’s strange habit of financing nearly 70% of the budget of an allegedly “non-governmental” homosexualist pressure group called ILGA Europe. The gay lobby is not amused.
On the website of the European Parliament’s “Intergroup on LGBT rights”, a network of parliamentarians with “diverse sexual orientations” one can study the habitual communication strategy of the gay lobby: finding it difficult to explain their own point of view, they simply fire abuse at their opponents, calling them “homophobic”, “incendiary”, and “right-wing”. And obviously, inquiring about the Commission’s questionable funding for ILGA means to “harass” and “bully” homosexuals…
Michael Cashman and Ulrike Lunacek (here with EU High Representative Catherine Ashton). The "sexually diverse" MEPs find it inappropriate that somebody should question the Commission's funding of a gay pressure group.
No wonder, therefore, that the questions are answered with a vile attack against the person asking them.
However, quite irrespective of who is asking, those questions deserve being answered carefully. They have nothing to do with homophobia or bullying. Nobody has questioned the right of gays and lesbians to lobby for their interests (although obviously many disagree with their agenda). Nobody has accused ILGA of any lack of transparency. Nobody has said that ILGA should not accept the money the Commission is so generously handing out to them (after all, without that funding this fake NGO wouldn’t even exist, would it…?).
No, the question is not for ILGA to answer, but for the Commission. And it has to do with fundamental democratic principles. As elected Members of Parliament, Mr. Cashman and Mrs. Lunacek should agree on the fundamental principle of representative democracy: what provides legitimacy to political institutions is a mandate received from the electorate. But what is the legitimacy of a “civil society” that does not appear to have received neither a democratic mandate nor any funding from those it pretends to represent? What is the purpose and legitimacy of a “dialogue” between the European Commission (which itself is quite remote from any democratic mandate) and a fake NGO it artificially keeps alive by financing it with taxpayers’ money? If, rather than with democratically elected representatives, the Commission wants to converse with NGOs and civil society, should it not make sure that it speaks with real NGOs and real civil society, and not with sock-puppets like ILGA?
There is widespread and growing concern over the EU listening not to citizens and their elected representatives, but to lobby groups that have no democratic mandate. But these lobbies at least represent some real social interests, namely those of the industries or citizens financing them. In the case of ILGA, we see the EU institutions conversing with a bogus lobby that they are themselves keeping alive. This is turning the idea of democracy into a patent absurdity.
And how is it possible that parlamentarians like Mr. Cashman or Mrs. Lunacek, the sexually diverse patrons of ILGA within the European Parliament, have no problem with this strange “political ventriloquism”, but rather with those calling it in question? With Members such as these, the European Parliament is abdicating its role as representation of the people. We are quite bemused.
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