Straight And Narrow Placed On Fred Alert

Newcastle Herald

Saturday January 21, 2006

Ben Quinn

MANY people of sound mind get a laugh out of Fred Nile.

They laugh because the good reverend is so determined, so gut-churningly pious, about his duty to shepherd us away from the myriad passions of life and therefore save us from the fires of his imagined Hell.

They laugh because his ideology is so outrageous he must be having a lend of us.

They laugh because it's the only appropriate response.

Nile, grumbling figurehead and publicity whiz for the Christian Democrats Party, has been back on his soapbox for the past week condemning Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, which tells the story of two cowboys and their enduring spiritual and sexual love.

The cowboys hide their true feelings under a veil of heterosexual normalcy because of bigots like Fred Nile.

Some of his comments have been breathtaking even by his standards.

Newcastle Herald: "If you watch any film these days you'll see that one in 10 actors are black. It's the same for homosexuals. To me what seems to be happening is they're trying to get a traditional society to endorse their lifestyle, and I don't believe the majority of Australian people do endorse it."

Melbourne Age: "I think it's causing great confusion to have two homosexual cowboys after all the popularity of the cowboy theme."

Up in the north Queensland outback, where a sheila's a sheila and a horse's hoof's a horse's hoof, Federal MP Bob Katter has been spouting similar nonsense.

Sunday Mail: "[Gays in the cattle industry] would be about as common as a beautiful sheila at a horsebreakers' camp out the back of Turrawalla. If cinemas don't wish to show it, then there should be no compulsion for them to do so."

Ian Roberts, the gay former rugby league international, has heard it all before.

"I'd so disagree with that," he said in response to Katter's comments.

"It would be the same percentage everywhere. If 10 per cent of the community is gay, then it would be the same in north Queensland.

"Maybe a lot of them are suppressed and more underground, but they're there."

And that's exactly where Fred Nile wants to keep them.

Newcastle Herald: "The bottom line is that homosexual sex is unnatural. The human body was not meant by the Creator, or by nature, for such acts. It is using the body's organs in a way that wasn't intended. We don't want teenage boys getting pushed into the homosexual lifestyle by this idea that it's normal."

Such astute comments from a blinkered dinosaur so disgusted by homosexuality he hasn't even watched the film! To be fair, the 71-year-old has a lot on his plate.

It must be awfully irksome fronting the press all the time to criticise things you don't even remotely understand.

His duty doesn't stop there. At the end of the working day the good reverend often watches the latest pornographic movies without ever being aroused, of course so he can denounce them with authority.

Nile's insights regarding Brokeback Mountain hit a raw nerve with Herald reader Jo Frewin, who wrote an eloquent letter to the editor:

"God save Fred Nile! Being a mother who watched her son grow up and become a beautiful [in spirit], loving, caring, gentle, gay man, I can assure Mr Nile that in this self-righteous, judgmental, prejudicial society that often has attitudes the same as his, no man chooses a gay lifestyle. They are being who they are.

"Confusion comes from the fact that Mr Nile [and other so-called followers of Jesus] say they should not be who they really are.

"God loves us all. I think Mr Nile and others protest too much."

Jo Frewin is right, of course, but there's a fundamentalist flaw which makes her plea fall on too many deaf ears.

"Mr Nile and others", as she politely puts it, have serious clout when it comes to the political decisions that affect the diversity and freedom Australia is supposedly built upon.

A recent Australia Institute survey on homophobia revealed that more than a third of Australians view homosexuality as immoral.

These people have kept Nile in the Upper House of NSW Parliament since 1981.

Christian-based political party Family First has decided not to stand at the next state elections in March 2007, giving Fred Nile a virtual monopoly over the vote of religious conservatives.

That means more excruciating rhetoric about how homosexuality is a disease which can be cured if impressionable youngsters aren't exposed to fraudulent filth such as Brokeback Mountain.

Lord have mercy.

Patriot games

SIX-TIME world surfing champion Layne Beachley will visit Newcastle on Tuesday to give an Australia Day address. (Bookings on 4974 2848)

Beachley touched down in Sydney on Thursday after spending a week in Los Angeles as an ambassador for Australian Tourism.

She realises the importance of strong role models at a time when the line between patriotism and racism is dangerously blurred.

"It was extremely disappointing to watch the riots in Sydney. These things aren't supposed to happen in such a harmonious multicultural society," Beachley told H2.

A perfect Australia Day message for the peabrained minority on all sides of the racial divide.

Edited by: Jim Kellar

Writers: Joanne McCarthy, Ben Quinn, Alice Kelly, Stewart Roach

Sub-editor: Gina Cranson

Cover: Natalie Alcova

© 2006 Newcastle Herald

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