Disbelief

Yesterday I heard a man on National Radio who outraged me (and no it wasn't Matthew Hooton). I only caught the end of the interview, but he was on part of Jim Mora's show in the afternoon, The Panel, and he was from what sounded like a very Stone Age organisation, Family First. I think the man in question was Steven Tetley-Jones, but the only person mentioned on their website is someone called Bob McCoskrie, so if any reader can enlighten me I'd appreciate it.

Anyway, The Man From Family First was talking about gay and lesbian adoption. He trotted out the tired old "unnatural" label, and went on and on about two heterosexual parents being best. (Never mind that the traditional nuclear family is in fact not the exclusive group that raise a child - extended whanau, family friends, members of the community, teachers, Plunket nurses, many many people raise every single child in our society. It is often when these other people are absent that a family, however it is composed, ends up under incredible stress and the child's upbringing starts to swing off course.)

Then The Man From Family First used a line that sent a shiver down my spine. He said (I paraphrase)

We don't want people have children for the wrong reason, for their own
ends... We don't want anyone to have a child wanting to raise it to
be just like them.

The implication being that homosexual parents would want to have a child for one of two reasons (or possibly both):

1. To raise homosexual children and thus perpetuate the homosexual master race that will soon outnumber heterosexuals (and no doubt outlaw the missionary position or somesuch)
2. To have access to a child to sexually abuse.

Mora, to his credit, seemed highly uncomfortable with all this, pointing out that the rates of sexual abuse by gay or lesbian people are actually very low. He didn't actually say that most sexual violence and abuse is carried out by heterosexual men, but I was yelling this at the radio so loudly I wouldn't be surprised if they could hear that point in the studio.

What chilled me though was the way this Man From Family First was discussing it all in such a jovial manner. At points he laughed and treated some of Mora's questions as if they were just having a jolly old jape down at their local. How could he reel off these outrageous accusations so lightly, as if they were accepted wisdom and beyond challenge? How can anyone expound such things on a radio station, so casually, and be completely oblivious to their effect?

Later on I slightly balanced up my disbelief by listening to the excellent 20 Years Out documentary that Maia recommended a few days ago. I'm too young to remember what happened and I didn't realise how much I take for granted until I heard that doco. It was startling, the hatred, and over what? If you don't want to have sex with a fellow XXer or XYer just don't. If you don't want to even think about it, then don't. John Banks certainly took the award for worst speaker, at one point denouncing it all as "very very very very bad." How about very very very very lame, John?

Some days I think we've come a long way - yesterday I didn't.

Update: Idiot/Savant has a good post on the anniversary with some very interesting links.