Oh, boy…
What’s the best way for the National Party to repair their image after the whole Barnaby Joyce debacle?
I know! By electing the author of a homophobic tirade as the new Nationals leader — and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. That’ll stop people talking about Joyce, at least.
Enter Michael McCormack, who represents the Riverina electorate in country NSW.
He was voted in as National Party leader this morning, despite having penned a horrendous column in 1993 for the The Daily Advertiser, in which he blamed homosexuals for AIDS, and referred to their “unnatural acts” and “sordid behaviour.”
Here it is (we’ve reprinted it below, too, in case you’re not fluent in reading smudged newsprint.)
Oh, and McCormack was also serving as Small Business Minister last year, and therefore running the ABS, at the time of the marriage equality vote.
It’s a problem.
To his credit, McCormack has repeatedly apologised for this piece, stressing that he no longer holds these views, and voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage.
“I have grown and learnt not only to tolerate, but to accept all people regardless of their sexual orientation or any other trait or feature which makes each of us different and unique”, he wrote last August, after the column was dug up by Christopher Pyne and deemed unacceptable.
“I apologised wholeheartedly for the comments at the time and many times since, but I am making this statement to unreservedly apologise again today.”
Fair enough. People make mistakes, and should be able to grow and learn from them. People change, people are susceptible to their surroundings and immediate influences, and society has moved on a lot in the past 25 years. In the early ’90s, country NSW was a fairly dark place for homosexuals.
Still, maybe he shouldn’t be in a position where he could run our country.
The entire letter is below. Obviously it is terrible, so read at your own risk.
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Dear readers,
“A week never goes by anymore that homosexuals and their sordid behaviour don’t become further entrenched in society.
Unfortunately gays are here and, if the disease their unnatural acts helped spread doesn’t wipe out humanity, they’re here to stay.
On Monday hundreds of thousands of homosexuals marched through Washington in a demonstration intended to show their demands for equal rights and an end to discrimination should no longer be ignored or denied.
How can these people call for rights when they’re responsible for the greatest medical dilemma known to man — Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome?
AIDS shows no discrimination.
It claims thousands upon thousands of innocent people’s lives every year.
On the very night of the homosexuals’ march that pompous critic Stuart Littlemore on Media Watch on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had the gall to criticise various newspaper editors across Australia for “gay bashing”.
He ridiculed them for showing some moral backbone and condemning homosexuality.
It’s just as well some newspapers are speaking up and acting as watchdogs on moral issues. If it was left up to the likes of Littlemore, heaven knows some of the all-embracing attitudes society would be told it was OK to accept.”
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