Politicians, if they're worth anything at all, realise that they can't say one thing and do another. Here in New Zealand, we have a major politician who apparently thinks that blatant homophobia is compatible with his promotion of “family values”.
Deputy Leader of the conservative National Party, Bill English, is reported to be consulting his lawyers after a news story on GayNZ.com revealed that homophobic remarks were posted on a Bebo page apparently written by his 14-year-old son. English told the media, "I consider this a disgusting and sick attack on a young teenager."
The mainstream media has reported English's fuming, and gave National Party Leader John Key the opportunity to say, somewhat disingenuously, “It's a bit of a despicable act ... This is being raised, I would argue with you, for political reasons—not because he is anyone else's son, but because he is Bill English's son.” Key went on to dismiss concerns over the comments on Bebo, saying “The reality is this has gone on since kids started talking behind the bike sheds. Part of growing up is expressing yourself. I'm not defending it, I'm just simply saying these sites are out there.”
In an article from the Christchurch Press, Colin Espiner wrote “The Bebo webpage referred to in the GayNZ. com article was shut down yesterday afternoon, but The Press viewed it earlier yesterday. There was only one apparent anti-homosexual reference on the site...” Whew! Thanks for clearing that up, Colin. As an expert on all things gay, you're clearly the most obvious person to determine what's homophobic and what's not.
The net effect of the slant of Colin Espiner and others in the MSM is to suggest that GayNZ.com was over-reacting and quite possibly making it all up. The general tone has been, “ah, boys will be boys!”
For its part, GayNZ.com reported that it debated on whether to run the story and did so in the end because English refused to comment, and then—after English was made aware of the web page's existence—even more homophobic remarks appeared on the page. They pointed out the seeming contradiction between a politician promoting “family values” while his own son was seen to be promoting hatred.
Bullying of young people is a serious problem, and cyberbullying is just the latest version of it. Suicide among GLBT youth is far higher than for youth generally. The use and abuse of social networking sites like Bebo by young people, apparently unsupervised, is a concern not just for parents, but for society generally. We cannot afford for children to grow up thinking that abuse and hatred are acceptible behaviours.
Neither can we permit politicians to huff and puff and scare the spotlight of scutiny away.
No comments:
Post a Comment