Wow hasn’t sexuality and in particular which side of the fence you are on become a hot topic of late!

First up, on my right, we have the thinking man’s meathead, using his News Limited column inches to astound the nation with his thoughts on homosexuality and football closely followed by, on my left, the Seven Network scooping up the ball from a bit of broken play and running towards the inside 50 with a piece on a New South Wales politician and his horrible, horrible homosexual secret life.

Where the hell is Senator Humphries when the nation, nay the world, needs him!

I don’t know whether Juzzy is covering this in the sport section or not but I’m going to start with Aker. I personally quite like Aker because he’s always proven to be unafraid of saying what he thinks. He’s never shied away from the media and I believe that once he pulls stumps on his playing career he will make a fantastic addition to any commentary team or analysis panel.

This time though, he’s gone beyond the pale with his article suggesting that gay footballers shouldn’t make their sexual orientation public during their playing careers. This isn’t something that anybody, even the great Jason Akermanis, can dictate to any one else.

I can only remember one footballer of any code making it publicly known that they were homosexual - Ian Roberts, who played his career at Manly, North Queensland (an area not known for tolerance of dem gay folk), and also at the highest levels of representative rugby league. To put it in perspective though Roberts was a fucking large unit. Gay or not there wouldn’t be many people who would want to go nose to nose in a stoush with that man, Wally Lewis excepted.

Not all people are so strong in both mind and body that they could be playing one of the most testosterone induced, macho, oh-ain’t-beer-and-chicks-great sports and be openly gay. And this is where I have issue with what Aker said. He’s thrown a blanket (or is it a closet) over the entire (possible) gay AFL community and said ‘No, we don’t want to know, so shut up and keep quiet you little queers’. I’d rather have heard him telling the AFL community, and the nation as a whole, that if an AFL footballer had the courage, they could come out and count on his support. That would be something that would take a great step towards more genuine social acceptance that people are all different.

I know it’s a kooky concept but we don’t like all the same fucking things......or fucking the same things.....to make a really crass joke that I thought of as I was typing that last sentence.

Anyway, enough of Aker. What the fuck was Channel Seven’s news department thinking when they decided to do a hatchet job on NSW Minister David Campbell? What? No real fucking news that day you vultures? Rather than actually go and find something noteworthy they destroy the career of a politician, not because he was doing a shit job or for some other work related reason, but because he is gay.

Bravo, my adoration, my applause! You absolute maggots! I understand the mainstream media’s need to sensationalise their product to draw in the ratings and outstrip their rivals but this is once again beyond the pale.

I like it when politicians are found out for their misdealing or gross incompetence. I like that because I mistrust politicians, even the ones I vote for. If they’re being outed as an incompetent pillock then I can feel somewhat more confident that the rest of them are not covering up corruption or complete inability to find their arse with a GPS and some fluorescent paint.

I do NOT, however, like watching a public figure being pilloried for something that is happening in their private life. Minister Campbell may well have been an excellent Minister. He may well have been a quite crap Minister. If he was crap then haul him over the coals for that, but leave his private life out of it, I don’t care, I don’t have a right to know and I do NOT want grubby little ambulance chasers’ vindictive prurient gossip being paraded across my TV screen in the guise of news.

I know I’ve expressed two almost conflicting views in this column. Berating Aker for telling people they shouldn’t tell the world the truth and then berating the Seven Network for telling the truth. The two issues are different but tied together by the concept of an individual’s right to privacy. Campbell had a right to decide for himself whether his sexuality should be made public. Channel 7 does not have the right to make that choice for him.

Aker made a blanket statement about the sport he has made (and more than likely will continue making) a career out of. He probably did it with all the best intentions, which can’t be said for Seven Network, but he was still asking individuals to give up their right to choose. While not as heinous as what Seven did, it is still denying people their right to privacy or publication.

As I said earlier.......where are you Senator Humphries? We need someone to put these idiots in their place and then maybe, just maybe we’ll all be able to get along.

 

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