By Kim Tong-hyung
The country’s powerful church groups are threatening to derail political efforts for new anti-discrimination legislation as they continue to claim that criticizing a person for their sexual orientation is a right.
To many politicians and the rest of society, that would be thought of as a manifestation of ridiculousness. But lawmakers are reluctant to irritate the mighty protestant organizations considering their influence on voters, which was critical in Park Geun-hye’s election win in December.
Currently, there are three draft anti-discrimination laws submitted to the National Assembly, written by Democratic United Party (DUP) lawmakers Kim Han-gil and Choi Won-sik and Kim Jae-yeon of the leftist Unified Progressive Party.
All three of the bills seek to outlaw discrimination in employment and other social interactions on grounds of sex, age, race, disabilities, medical records, faith, and yes, sexual orientation.
The DUP lawmakers said they will hold public hearings on their draft laws, which just past their 40-day notification periods, before fine-tuning them and pushing them for approval.
Protestant groups like the Christian Council of Korea (CCK), the country’s biggest church lobby, backed by the largest and wealthiest churches in Seoul, are balking at the sexual orientation part and insist that the new regulations should apply only to heterosexuals.
This is a stance that the more progressive Christian groups find embarrassing as they accuse their bigger brethren of stunting the progress in equality issues. However, they remain only a minority voice.
``The draft anti-discrimination laws have a number of poisonous clauses like the respect for homosexuality. These regulations in discussion aren’t balance as they would disallow us to voice opposing opinions (on homosexuality) and the right to educate our children that those choices aren’t right,’’ said an official from the Korea Christian Public Policy Committee, connected to many church groups including the CCK.
It’s difficult to imagine the Saenuri Party, the conservative governing party, being bold about including gays in anti-discrimination legislation, considering that Christian voters combine as a critical support group for the Park government.
The DUP, the largest opposition party, has been weasely about issues on sexual minorities too.
One of the confounding moments of the presidential election came when DUP candidate Moon Jae-jin, a human rights lawyer-turned-politician, pledged his full commitment toward preventing same-sex marriages from being legalized, a blatant bid to curry favor with the country’s powerful Christian groups.
This was after he spent weeks prating ad nauseam about how discrimination against minorities supposedly accelerated under the previous Lee Myung-bak government.
This also represented a flip-flop from Moon’s earlier position in which he recognized same-sex unions as among the ``new types of families’’ appearing in Korean society and promised to provide gay rights groups with ``institutional alternatives.’’
``I am well aware of the concerns of Christian groups. I hope they won’t blindly oppose what we are trying to do and rather participate in our public hearings to voice their opinions. We are very interested to hear them, obviously,’’ said DUP’s Choi.
``Anti-discrimination legislation is all about preserving the rights God has given to every person. It’s not right for Christian groups to come out and spew conspiracy theories about human rights related issues,’’ said Kim Jin-ho, who heads the progressive Christian Institute for the 3rd Era.
``Anti-discrimination laws are being introduced in countries around the world and the introduction of a similar legislation would be a watermark indicating how mature our country is. If church groups completely ignore what these laws could mean to society, they would be disregarding their essential missions as people of faith.’’