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 We’re really between a rock and a hard place with the folk at Family First. According to FF Leichhardt candidate, Ben Jacobsen, ‘voters may not give a rats if a candidate is gay…but they have a right to know who you’ll bat for’.
Party leader Steve Fielding went into damage control right away, forcing Jacobsen to apologise for the comment he made regarding Charlie McKillop, the candidate expected to carry on Warren Entsch’s seat for the Liberals. But essentially, Jacobsen was only articulating the overall FF philosophy. Clearly, he and many others in the party believe being gay or lesbian is both unfortunate and an impediment to effective representation of one’s constituents.
The party doesn’t attract candidates like this man – or supporters who seek to burn lesbians at the stake – by accident. Similarly, it doesn’t preference all but two Liberal candidates – one openly lesbian, the other one of the party’s most vocal GLBTI supporters – by accident either, as it did at the last federal election. So Fielding’s statement that he had ‘spoken to (Jacobsen) and told him that his comments were inappropriate and offensive’ rings hollow.
FF wants it both ways. Their pollies go out of their way to keep queer folk down by denying equal rights in our relationships, parenting and access to the public purse, but as Jacobsen demonstrates it’s not even sufficient for us to stay quiet in the closet – we must make a public declaration, too, presumably for ease of identifying targets for further persecution. Perhaps they’d like us to go around wearing pink triangles on our biceps?
If McKillop is a lesbian, and I don’t mean to insinuate one way or another, I sincerely hope that, if she chooses to stay in the closet, she will at least do justice to Entsch’s legacy by carrying on his tremendous work lobbying his party internally to act on their own alleged opposition to unjustified discrimination. After all, the seat takes in Cairns and its surroundings, which contain quite a few queer residents and holidaymakers, so if nothing else it’s smart and effective grassroots advocacy.
Even though Jacobsen has ‘apologised’ for his statement, he’s still refused to clarify his personal view whether or not all candidates should declare their sexuality. That is, his views, and no doubt those of many FF candidates, remain the same, no matter how much the party leader tries to spin them.
Every statement like this helpfully scratches away FF’s thin veneer of gentle secularity – they’re neither – and given Labor is set to screw the party out of a preference deal and thereby not accidentally hand them a senate spot, as they did in 2004, hopefully after this election Fielding will remain the only First Fundie in federal politics we have to combat.
Sam Butler: http://queerpenguin.blogspot.com
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