klutz.geek.nz

Fuck you, Family First

Cross-posting from Facebook here, because I’m incredibly angry about this.

How DARE Family First, especially in light of statistics that have just been released about the appalling extent of teen suicide in this country, say that the sky-high suicide rate among our LGBT teenagers because of bigotry (FIVE TIMES the already horrific rate) is akin to soccer players killing themselves because they aren’t allowed to call soccer rugby and rugby players think they are wusses.

I am SO DONE with people like Family First pretending to be concerned about our youth when really they mean “those who live lives we approve of”. Criticize same-sex marriage all you want - although I suspect we’ve heard every argument before - but don’t fucking dare throw back the horrific suicide rate in our faces as a fucking parody.

Fuck you, Family First. Fuck you and every gratified, obliquely classist, propagandic piece of media you put out there. Especially this one.

Here’s the (edited) link, and a GayNZ article which has come up since which contains a bit which is no longer available. I see that they’ve redacted the claim since the version I was emailed, and added a disclaimer:

UPDATE: Please note that we have removed the reference to suicide in this satirical piece. In light of horrendous stats on suicide just released, it was an inappropriate reference. The piece was sent to us – we didn’t write it – but we should have vetted it better. We apologise for any offense the reference may have caused. It was certainly not our intention.

No, it wasn’t your intention to cause offense, just to minimize the hardship that LGBT teens face in many parts of the country and reduce the struggle for equality to “boo hoo soccer players are different to rugby players, let’s pass a definition of rugby act”.

Again, fuck Family First.