The Adventures of QueerPenguin

Don't Snap My Head Off, Carmel

Those evil homosexualist engineers in the Education Department are at it again - this time, they're - horror - getting kids to imagine a world that is not heteronormative. Our Edumacation Minister, Carmel Tebbutt, has stepped in to ban future use of the teaching resource "A Guided Journey" by US author Brian McNaught, apparently known as the "Godfather of gay sensitivity training", after one - one - "outraged member of the community" made one complaint about the use of this book in one school to Brendan Nelson.

I guess I had higher hopes for Carmel - ALP woman who I assume is from the Left (her husband and federal Left headkicker Anthony Albanese certainly is) - but as someone who, according to insider sources, has banned all use of the word "empathise" in any of her press releases, pandering to homophobia's not such a great leap.

Once again, however, the media reporting of this story is more offensive than the events themselves. First I heard on the radio this morning Ron Wilson's dulcet tones infused with distress when reporting on "outrage" to the "promotion of the gay and lesbian lifestyle". So once again we're a lifestyle, not a natural occurrence in the biological world. We're Megan Gale getting in a bit of tanning before she hops on her latest sugar daddy's private jet to Catalina. We're Lillian Frank supervising the renos on her Toorak pad. What a privileged lifestyle we lead.

Then, how do Rupert minions report the story? First line: "Students as young as 14 have been asked at school to place themselves in an imaginary world dominated by homosexuals and lesbians during lessons." 14? Oh, please, won't somebody THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!! The queer mafia really does want to recruit your children, so watch out.

This "controversial lesson has been branded as 'brainwashing and social engineering' by education experts", although as far as I can see from the article, the "experts" in question are the said "outraged member" (no pun intended, much) and Kevin Donnelly, the former Chief of Staff to RRR cheerleader Kevin Andrews. And if this opinion piece is anything to go by, Donnelly's reaction here was always going to be a fill-in-the-blanks, anti-queer sound byte. But I guess that's what news.com's "journalism" is all about. Gay and lesbian issues must always be reported from the same template: blow the issue out of proportion, use unnecessarily emotive adjectives, throw in the odd quote from a long line of willing homophobes and don't even bother to quote anybody who might defend this course of action. At least Nova had the decency to get in a response from David Scammell.

News.com leaves us with no ambiguity, however; parents should be outraged, and if they aren't, then they're not proper parents anyway, in fact they're probably those abominable same-sex parents who should be sterilised and have their children rescued from their sinful hovel of depravity and placed in a wholesome Hillsong home instead.

posted by Sam @ Monday, June 06, 2005