Bartholomew's Notes

News from Croatia, via OneWorldSee:

The Centre for LGBT Equality demanded, in an open letter to the Croatian Sabor (the Parliament), to cancel the announced lecture by Judith Reisman, scholar notorious all over the world or her discriminatory and homophobic views, believing that the Sabor is not a proper venue for Reisman to give a lecture.

The site provides the text of the letter, as a Word document; it includes the following:

We learned from media reports that Judith Reisman, Ph.D., will give series of lectures at Zagreb University’s Medical School, the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Political Sciences. These are disappointing news since we believe that the institutions of Zagreb University are not the place for dissipation of aggressive targeted propaganda that was already denounced by the scientific and academic community Reisman’s home country, the U.S.

However, we were especially worried by the announcement that, on January 31, at 11:00 hours, at the Ivan Mažurani? Hall of the Croatian Sabor, Judith Reisman will give a lecture on the topic “Experiences with Sexual Education in the U.S. and UK”…

Reisman has featured on this blog a number of times: in December 2011 the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) brought her to the UK to speak on the same topic, under the title “Sex education as sexual sabotage”, at an event that involved several MPs.

Reisman has a horror of “deviancy”, and she is quick to conflate sexual freedoms  – such as acceptance of homosexuality – with the promotion of paedophilia. Like many cranks, she believes societal changes of which she disapproves are the result of ideology, and many of her theories crystallise around the figure of Alfred Kinsey. However, she also speaks out on other subjects, such as the “celebratory Arab mosque near Ground Zero.” Inevitably, she is also a columnist for Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily, which is known primarily for posting conspiracy theories about Obama. The best general background article is by Miss Poppy Dixon, and can be seen here.

According to media reports (mostly Croatian), Reisman was invited to Parliament by members of the Croatian Democratic Union (Croatian: Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ); HDZ president Tomislav Karamarko defended the invitation:

He confirmed that the HDZ had invited US Professor of Law Education Judith Reisman, better known for her film “Kinsey’s Syndrome” and her open support to HTV reporter Karolina Vidovic Kristo* when her current affairs programme “The Image of Croatia” was taken off the air after she had broadcast excerpts from the film.

“Where is the problem in this? We are a plural society and have the right to think the way we want to about a particular problem”, he said.

The Speaker of the Parliament, Josip Leko, apparently knew nothing about it. Opposition parties argue that such an event should be held on party premises rather than in Parliament, and they have drawn particular attention to Reisman’s view that homosexuals were responsible for the rise of Nazism and for the Holocaust (here, Reisman follows the lead of the notorious Scott Lively)

Reisman has already spoken at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb; according to a critical account here, her lecture was not well-received, and she was unable to answer questions about her “erototoxin” theory beyond a vague reference to “top scientists”. Reisman subsequently told the press that she has never encountered “so many bullies” anywhere in the world as in Croatia.

Footnote

* Kristo apparently got into trouble for covering news  about sex education proposals under the headline “Pedophilia as the foundation of sexual education?” She was subsequently received by the Archbishop of Zagreb, Cardinal Josip Bozanic.

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