An abomination
Sophie Cunningham
August 09
Wendy Francis is a Family First Candidate for senate. She’s on twitter. Yesterday, this is what she saw fit to tweet.
Francis’s since withdrawn the statements because people were so outraged. It’s unacceptable that hate speech is used in an election campaign. Francis’s statements are demonstrably inaccurate. Numerous research reports point to the fact that that there is no evidence linking homosexuality with abuse or poor outcomes for children. And heterosexuality is certainly no protection against child abuse – the case of Robert Farquharson is just one example of the tragedy that takes place within heterosexual families far too frequently.
In this campaign these kind of statements are going unchallenged far too often. For example, a refugee is someone who is outside their country and fears punishment or harassment (persecution) on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. They ARE NOT illegal immigrants. In this campaign the terms are being used interchangeably. When politicians are put on the spot on these issues by the media, or the general public, why are they, to quote the West Wing, unable to say ‘I do not accept the premise of your question’. Frankly, there hasn’t been enough Jed Bartlet in this campaign.
Update: interesting post here on the impact of Francis’s tweets and the response they triggered.
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Comments
09 Aug 10 at 9:44
Has there been any response by the Libs or ALP to this? Would be interesting to see if either has the courage to say something that might upset the ‘family values’ crowd?
...09 Aug 10 at 9:46
No response that I’m aware of – but if there is I’ll post it.
...09 Aug 10 at 12:37
How are these people even allowed to get away with this? Surely there should be some kind of regulatory body to ensure that this kind of behaviour doesn’t go unpunished? :/
...09 Aug 10 at 13:00
That’s what I was wondering, Phil. It’s really mad – mad and inflammatory.
...09 Aug 10 at 20:00
This election campaign has everything bad under the sun! All of the quoted Francis is nonsense but the hatefulness, as you say, in that second tweet “legitimising gay marriage is like legalising child abuse” should warrant her being suspended.
And the youtube clip is a mini-essay in itself – thanks for sharing.
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