Homosexual zealots claim tolerance but attack Cory Bernardi's book 'Conservative Revolution"
"We know the statistics - that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioural problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.'' - President Barack Obama, Father's Day speech, 2008.
Yes, we do know the statistics. But that hasn't stopped an avalanche of hate - and I use the word advisedly - being unleashed against Cory Bernardi for quoting and echoing the sentiments of Obama in his book The Conservative Revolution (Connor Court 2013).
The big whisper going around now about Bernardi is that he is gay. The preposterous logic goes like this: Bernardi hates gays, he is obsessed by the subject, which means he is probably a repressed, self-loathing homosexual.
Under fire: Cory Bernardi. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer
No less than a federal MP and Liberal backbencher, Warren Entsch, has promoted this absurdity. On Tuesday, he told Fairfax Media: ''He's obviously got an obsession with people that are gay. It worries me. You've really got to watch out for those that have these obsessions. He who protests the loudest …''
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Entsch himself is obviously gay if we apply his own tortured logic. Unlike Bernardi, he has long been obsessive about gays. For 10 years, he has campaigned against his own party's position on same-sex marriage and promoted a private member's bill in support of gay marriage (although he drew the line at supporting the Greens on the issue). The subject of gays caused him to go into party discipline meltdown and traduce the reputation of a colleague with smears, exaggeration and innuendo.
Let's look at the timeline of hate.
Monday: the first story that suggested Bernardi's book was controversial appeared, as night follows day, on the ABC. Within hours of the ABC report, and interview by Bernardi on ABC TV following up on that report, Bernardi's office in Adelaide was inundated by phone calls. ''The office was overwhelmed with calls,'' Bernardi told me. ''There was clearly an orchestrated campaign of abuse which was levelled at my staff.''
Tuesday: The phone and email campaign extended to Amazon, where hundreds of negative reviews of The Conservative Revolution were published by people who had not read the book. and the comments at the office became more personal. ''There were questions to my staff like 'Can you ask Cory how I should insert my tampon, as he wants to tell all women what to do?''' Bernardi said. "My female staffers were told things like, 'How can you work for such a bigoted c---', and 'You have betrayed the sisters by working for him, you treacherous bitch'. Some left recorded messages. It was clearly an orchestrated campaign.''
Wednesday: Entsch weighs in via Fairfax Media, insinuating Bernardi is a self-loathing homosexual and asking what Bernardi would think if a member of his family turned out to be gay: ''Would he advocate sterilisation?''
This is despicable, and there is a subtext to this. After the Coalition won government last year, Tony Abbott dropped Entsch from the position of chief whip. And Entsch is friendly with Malcolm Turnbull, who is openly contemptuous of Bernardi. Entsch even mentioned Turnbull in his attack on Bernardi, saying Turnbull had been raised by his single father and was not a lesser person for that.
Thursday: a reaction to the hate campaign, with a heavy flow of supportive calls and emails. ''Interestingly, the email feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,'' Bernardi said.
All week, Fairfax Media has published a string of negative reporting, commentary and remarks about Bernardi, yet in this coverage no one has even pretended to have read the book. If they had, they would see Bernardi quotes a plethora of studies and that it was a British Family Court judge, Sir Paul Coleridge, not Bernardi, who came up with the phrase that traditional families should be the ''gold standard'' as the best protector of children's welfare.
Based on his Family Court experience, the judge said family breakdown was the root cause of most social ills and warns: ''What is a matter of private concern when it is on a small scale becomes a matter of public concern when it reaches epidemic proportions.''
In his book, Bernardi sums up his argument on families with this: ''Social policy should continue to advocate for the best possible social environment for children. More often than not, as studies have shown, that environment is a family with a child's married biological mother and father. Of course, there will always be exceptions to this - some traditional families fail miserably at childcare and some step-families do a wonderful job of raising children - but it should not deter society as a whole from encouraging its citizens to pursue the traditional family model.''
Not exactly rabid. The same cannot be said for the parade of bigotry over the past seven days - absurdly claiming to be in defence of tolerance.
Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/so-ready-to-throw-book-at-bernardi-without-reading-it-20140112-30okv.html#ixzz2qFSR0BX5
