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Some of us Baby Boomers and Generation X may remember Jeanne (pronounced “Jeannie”) Little.
She was the larger-than-life Aussie TV personality who made all her own flamboyant clothes and captivated audiences with her unique, down-to-earth humour.
In 1976 Jeanne won a Gold Logie. It was an amazing feat, given that she had been unknown just two years earlier. By chance, she had filled in for a missing guest on Channel Ten’s Mike Walsh Show – and became an overnight star.
Jeanne sadly died last November aged 82, after suffering severe dementia for more than a decade. But the ABC TV Australian Story program “I dream of Jeanne” – broadcast in her honour on 1 March – revealed a startling secret about her loving husband, Barry Little.
Jeanne and Barry had one child, their daughter Katie. After her father died in July 2019, Katie came across a box of love letters he had written as a young man.
At first she thought Barry had written the letters to her mother. But as she read on, she realised that they had been written, years before Barry met Jeanne, to another man.
Barry had been in a long-term homosexual relationship, which ended when the other man became involved with someone else. Barry later met Jeanne and it was “love at first sight”. Their marriage was a lasting, mutually faithful union.
Katie was flabbergasted. How could her father, who deeply loved her mother and was deeply loved in return, have ever been a homosexual? But he was, and he had changed.
No wonder she was perplexed. In “woke” circles* today it is considered a “hate crime” to suggest that someone attracted to the same sex could ever change their orientation.
Indeed, in Victoria today it is now a crime punishable by jail and/or a huge fine if you agree to help a same-sex-attracted person not to act on their unwanted feelings. You cannot even pray for this with him or her.
The new law passed the Victorian Legislative Assembly without opposition last December. It passed the Legislative Council on 4 February, with only two Liberal and seven crossbench MPs voting against.
Peter Stevens, our FamilyVoice Victoria Director, was deeply disappointed. He had worked hard to contact state MPs to explain how unjust and destructive the law would be. Many thousands of Victorians, including our supporters, did the same. Most MPs did not listen.
The truth, as Katie discovered, is that sexual orientation is not determined at birth. Some people change their sexual orientation without any “therapy” or “change practices”. Others change after receiving encouragement from therapists or pastors.
The FamilyVoice library has a research paper, Are homosexuals born that way?, produced by our founder Dr David Phillips. It details many studies from peer-reviewed journals. Among other things, they have shown that significant numbers of same-sex attracted teens become opposite-sex attracted in their 20s.
Peter Downie - National Director
FamilyVoice Australia
* “Woke”: a slang term meaning the person supports “politically correct” policies that are often anti-life and anti-family.