Posts by Steve Parks
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Hard News: Bishop Brian: It's worse than…, in reply to Damian Christie,
[Campbell] seemed incredulous that Tau, Shane and Hone wouldn’t join in with him.
It didn’t seem that way to me. I think, like a lot of people, he was just a little surprised at how much they were reluctant to overtly criticise Destiny Church, even after the event.
They all made it pretty clear (Tau explicitly so), they were there to shake hands and kiss babies with a big Maori audience in an election year. I wouldn’t expect them to speak out against Destiny any more than I’d expect Phil Goff or John Key to attend a Catholic Mass and use that as an opportunity to decry the church’s position on abortion, contraception and homosexuality, or that its priests fiddle with kids. Time and place.
Even if you were to accept the argument that it wasn’t the time or place at the actual conference (which I don’t), how would it not be the time and place in an interview after the event? We can expect a direct answer to a question such as (per your example) ‘Do you agree with the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality?’ So why not here? Why was it like pulling teeth to get a straight answer out of the MPs about that issue?
According to Danya Levy, Tau Henare “would not be drawn on whether he agreed with Destiny Church’s hardline stance on issues such as homosexuality.” As I mentioned, he also didn’t answer that question directly on Campbell Live.
I eventually got him to state on Twitter that they held “homophobic views” that he did not share. Good, but why not say that to the mainstream media without hesitation? Seems like Tau and the others are clearly trying to stay onside with their new group of potential votes.
But as others have pointed out, we would be surprised to see such acquiescence from MPs to a rally or event involving racism. It’s as if some forms of bigotry are less reprehensible than others.
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Hard News: Bishop Brian: It's worse than…, in reply to Cecelia,
My biggest disappointment was Shane “I’m a red-blooded male” Jones. When interviewed after the conference he said he was sure they would love any gay children they might just as much as their other children. Did I hear that right?
Yeah it was something like that. I was disappointed by Jones as well. I’m sure his comment about still loving a gay family member is true in itself, but it is also weasely, and didn’t answer the question (about whether they agreed with Destiny’s views on homosexuality) directly. It could easily be interpreted as a “love the sinner, hate the sin” approach.
Why couldn’t the MPs have simply said they absolutely disagreed with the Destiny Church’s views on homosexuality? Either because a) they actually agreed; or b) they disagreed, but didn’t want to say anything too antagonistic in the mainstream media about Destiny Church, whose votes they’re soliciting. It’s pretty vile either way.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
But most religious groups also agitate politically, and it’s the content of Destiny’s political activity that ought to disqualify them I think.
I wouldn’t even say “disqualify”, if you mean from having MPs attend. I just think that if an MP accepts an invitation such as in this case, they should either:
a) Make a point of challenging the organisation’s bigotry, as Metiria Turei said she would have in the Destiny Church case (if she’d received her invite), or;
b) At least own the fact that they agree with their bigotry. -
Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Heather Gaye,
I made the same mistake. This part from the “rebuttal” tells you all you need to know about their agenda:
Sexual offenses are like all the other social pathologies we know of: they are largely caused by fatherless households. But that message, which emphasizes the importance of men in the lives of their children, doesn’t play well among the progressives who control the sexual grievance industry and who think of men as not only disposable but as far more trouble than they are worth.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Steven Price,
And isn’t there a difference between having your identity known to thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of people on twitter, and having it published to millions on the front page of The Sun?
Yeah, but it doesn't stay with the tens of thousands of twitterers. They then pass on the information in many other ways: they tell their Facebook friends and spread it through other social media, they email it round work, it goes on websites, even old fashioned person to person gossip. Plus the fact of the Twittering itself becomes mainstream news including in the area covered by the order, and that drives a further bout of people-who-would-otherwise-not-have-cared to look up the person online, just out of curiosity.
Don't know if that kind of escalation will happen most of the time, though. But I expect celebs and public figures may start to see an attempt at injunctions or suppression orders a bit of a gamble.
Regards suppression of victims details, yes I think that does largely work and will continue to be worthwhile. There's a lot of goodwill around those kinds of orders.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to nzlemming,
You can’t take out an ad in the newspaper either.
No, but there seems to be quite a big difference between taking out an ad and joining a discussion forum/joining a group of people at the pub. I'm talking about discussion forums, in particular Facebook, being rather like 'real' discussions.
When you put something out in public, where even you can’t control who reads/hears it
Is Facebook public? I can control who reads what I put on it, can't I? Twitter is, admittedly, different and more public in that respect.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
We have this law because:
* politicians can stuff off – today is about us the voters;
* we want people to be able to vote without being harassed by people outside polling places who might scare them off: can’t be bothered going through all that, etc;
* we actually like the serenity – it feels like democracy;It’s not about twitter. This law covers twitter because it was written broadly enough that it would, back when it was written ages ago.
I agree with the gist of most of that, but the law obviously needs changing.
If election day is about us voters, us voters should be able to approach it as we please. I should be able to go to my friends house and join an election day party, where we discuss and argue and joke about the unfolding events without worrying that I may make a comment that transgresses electoral law. And of course I can, just as I could go down the local and do similar. But I can't go on to Facebook and equally freely discuss with my friends there. Not that I want to, but if that's how someone wants to spend their election day, they should be able to do so.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to nzlemming,
If we remove all restrictions on election day advertising you will get massive inflammatory lying rhetoric from large organised groups, a real problem as there is no time for a right of reply.
Why wouldn't they just move that rhetoric to the day before, then. There would still be no right of reply, as no one could respond on election day.
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Possibly not safe for work:
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