Scores of students, faculty and guests walked out of a graduation ceremony in Melbourne, Australia, due to a former union president's far-right graduation speech.
Joseph de Bruyn, the former national president of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association began railing against abortion, IVF and same-sex marriage during his speech at Australian Catholic University on Monday.
De Bruyn was being awarded an honorary doctorate by the university, and used his time to address the school's arts, law and commerce graduates to erupt in an extremist tirade and scold Catholics for "caving" to "peer pressure" on social issues.
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According to a transcript of the speech obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, de Bruyn's speech was almost entirely centered on these far-right topics.
De Bruyn called abortion a "tragedy that must be ended" before claiming:
“Abortion is the single biggest killer of human beings in the world, greater than the human toll of World War II. It is a tragedy that must be ended.”
De Bruyn also insisted that marriage was only for relationships between men and women, because it was “instituted by God at the origin of humanity in the Garden of Eden, as the book of Genesis in the Bible tells us."
He then rebuked Catholics who support these social issues.
"My experience is that many Catholics cave in to peer pressure. They think their professional lives will be harmed if they promote the teachings of the Church.”
One attendee, a student named Charlie Panteli, told the ABC that "95%" of those in the audience walked out during what he called de Bruyn's "shocking" speech. Panteli went on to say:
"I only heard abortions and IVF and I was one of the first to get up and I was quite far down the front and I started to signal I was going."
"It was the most selfish speech to give at a graduation. He did not reference us at all."
On social media, many people found de Bruyn's graduation speech appalling.
For his part, de Bruyn told the ABC that he was shocked people walked out on his speech.
"I was surprised that at a Catholic university, when you are talking as a Catholic layman about how you have tried to inject the teachings of the Catholic Church into public debate that there would be such a response."
"If a person walked out because they disagreed with what I was saying, they were obviously disagreeing with the teachings of the Catholic Church because this is what I was conveying in my speech."
A spokesperson for the university also said they knew about de Bruyn's speech ahead of time and had asked him to "reconsider," a request de Bruyn told the ABC he considers "censorship." In response, the university offered a tepid apology:
"The university understands that many of our staff, graduates and their families disagreed with the content of Mr. de Bruyn's speech and we regret that this occurred."
Panteli says that's simply not good enough.
"I would like them to apologize because this guy did hijack our day. His speech had nothing to do with anything really. It wasn't appropriate."
He also demanded de Bruyn be stripped of his honorary doctorate for his "appalling" comments.
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