The Most Offensive Pamphlet Of Election 2013?
The bottom of that barrel must be pretty slim pickings.
If you live in Queensland, you might have had one of these handed to you on the street or dropped in your letterbox.
The pamphlet, which has been replicated in the electorate of Petrie (against ALP member Yvette D’Ath), Lilley (against LNP member Wayne Swan) and Brisbane (against LNP member Teresa Gambaro), and has been translated into Vietnamese for Oxley (against ALP member Bernie Ripoll), features the words “I want my mum and dad”, and a baby who is crying — presumably because she has just been informed that her same-sex parents have been manipulating her this whole time into believing she is normal and happy, when actually she is neither and should take a step back and think about that for a while.
It argues that teaching “gay & lesbian marriage” in school and kindy (they teach “gay & lesbian marriage” at kindy?) will lead children to believe that “kids have no right to both a mum and dad” and “parents who disagree are bigots”.
As evidence, the pamphlet cites “Rosie”, Queensland’s first legal surrogate mum who “bitterly regretted giving up her newborn to a gay couple”. But dig a little deeper! Google it! Find the Courier Mail article the pamphlet references! Look at the quotes from Rosie, who mentions nothing about same-sex parenting at all!
Rosie regretted giving the baby away, but it had nothing to do with her two gay friends. “As soon as the baby was born it all changed,” she says. “I was crying in hospital when he was having his first bath, I couldn’t watch, I thought what the hell have I done? I never thought having a child and giving him away would make me feel like this … I don’t regret Connor, I regret the decision very much, I just wish I’d never done it.”
A quick search of the address at the bottom of the pamphlet leads to the Yellow Pages listing for the National Civic Council, a notoriously covert fundamentalist Catholic political group/think tank which played a key role in the “Yellow Peril” anti-Communist scare campaign of the late 1940s, and is associated with the Australian Family Association — the group behind National Marriage Day.
When contacted, a representative of the NCC explained that Gavan Duffy (who authorised the ad for Moreton and Brisbane) and L. McCormack (who authorised the ad for Lilley) both work from the office of the National Civic Council, and that the NCC is anti-gay marriage and finds surrogacy problematic — but, somewhat mysteriously, he claims the leaflet did not come from them.
Have you seen a more offensive pamphlet? Email it to hello[at]junkee[dot]com!