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The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) will face a Press Council hearing later this month over a columnist who wrote about a “subculture of paedophilia amongst gays”.
In a May 26 article on the Bill Henson furore, SMH columnist Paul Sheehan wrote that “pederasts and child sexploiters have had a dream run in our society”.
“A subculture of pedophilia among gays, an epidemic of child sexual abuse in the Aboriginal community, and a multimillion-dollar porn industry on the internet have all been protected variously by privacy laws, artistic licence, freedom of expression, and Aboriginal rights," Sheehan wrote.
One of two complainants, Dale Mills, 44, told SX he believed the column was “more a rant than an opinion piece”.
“He presented a homophobic prejudice as a fact. The supposed link between pedophilia and gay men is used to justify all sorts of discrimination and violence.
“That is why the link that Sheehan has made, without citing any evidence, is so reprehensible.
In a letter to the Press Council, the SMH has denied any wrongdoing.
“Mr Sheehan deliberately used the word ‘subculture’, a word that the Oxford dictionary defines as ‘a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture’,” the SMH letter reads.
Mills told said he was pleased the Press Council had taken on the complaint.
“I was told the Press Council normally don’t take complaints about opinion pieces unless they overstep the line, so it’s a bit of a victory that they’re even hearing the case,” he said.
The hearings will be held on July 30.
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