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SOCIETY: You can't be EU Commissioner. You're Christian.
BRUSSELS, November 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A consortium of homosexualist, secular humanist and abortion groups are campaigning against the appointment of the Maltese Dr. Tonio Borg as the new EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner. The objection, they say, is nothing more than that Dr. Borg is a Catholic, with "staunchly conservative and outdated" views on homosexuality, divorce and abortion.
The campaign has been organised, according to sources at the EU Parliament, by the European Humanist Federation, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, ILGA - Europe, and International Planned Parenthood Federation.
The situation is drawing comparisons to when a group of far-left activists blocked the appointment of Italian politician Rocco Buttiglione as Italy's representative at the European Parliament in 2004. At the time, Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli accused Buttiglione's opponents as "fundamentalist" anti-Christians.
"This decision shows the real face of Europe," Castelli said, "a face which we don't like. It's fundamentalist, which is absolutely not on."
A document released by the European Parliament's Intergroup on LGBT Rights admits that a Commissioner's personal religious beliefs are not "topics of EU competence." However, they maintain that Borg's "issues of conscience" would "prevent him from being an impartial commissioner."
The group say they fear that since "all 27 Commissioners are always consulted before Commission proposals are made public; this would give him considerable influence across EU competences". They particularly objected to his support for the pro-life NGO Gift of Life, whose mission includes, "making it harder for abortion to ever be legalised in Malta."
The group complains that Borg once told a pro-life conference "that the Maltese constitution should define life as beginning from conception, defining any abortion as murder." They objected to Borg reiterating the findings of human embryologists that "an embryo starts from fertilisation. There is no pre-embryo" … "meaning any fertilised egg is a full human embryo and must be legally protected as a person."
