Southland Times front page headline last week It's been just over a week since our phones started ringing with urgent requests for media interviews and statements regarding the story GayNZ.com broke highlighting the ongoing inaction of influential and eminent politician Bill English over his son's publicly posted homophobic abuse. In the intervening days we have came under attack for running the story, sometimes from within our own glbt community. But, as the days have passed, the attacks have quickly petered out, support has come rolling in, and we have been able to reflect on the story which took over nearly all our working hours last week, and to consider some of the allegations which have been levelled against GayNZ.com. So, in no particular order, here are some of the criticisms which we have observed in the media, press releases, message boards, forums and our incoming emails. And, of course, our responses. 1. This was a politically motivated attack by GayNZ.com on a conservative politician. GayNZ.com is a tool of the Labour party. No. GayNZ.com has aggressively taken a number of political figures to task for their support for homophobia, including Labour MP Ashraf Choudhary when he suggested that the stoning to death of gays and lesbians in Muslim countries was acceptable, and independent Auckland mayor Dick Hubbard when he co-signed a covert letter to MPs claiming gay and lesbian parents were more likely than the general population to abuse and even kill our children - a claim without any basis in fact. And we have always acknowledged that the final steps toward destroying legalised discrimination against glbt people, such as the passing of the human Rights legislation, occurred during a National-led government. We applaud then-National Prime Minister Jenny Shipley for controversially attending the Hero Parade in an official capacity, just as we applaud current Prime Minister Helen Clark for her awareness of glbt issues. We covered Don Brash's professed support for glbt issues, and his subsequent about face in Parliament. We have also covered John Key's publicly expressed acceptance of homosexuality as a natural and innate aspect of our beings. Credit where credit is due, criticism where criticism is due. GayNZ.com is apolitical, our ethos is based on the philosophy that being homosexual is a natural state for a minority of people. Homosexuality offers opportunities for vibrant, fulfilling lives, but in some instances use of it against us results in misery and an exceptionally high level of homophobic attacks, murders and a glbt suicide rate variously reported as three or four times the national average in New Zealand or countries comparable to ours. Sadly, homosexuality is still controversial in some sectors of society and the political arena is often where differences of opinion are highlighted. Being glbt means some politicians feel they have the right to attack or legislate against us, therefore politics and homosexuality sometimes collide. But this was not a political attack, just an exposure of hypocrisy by a prominent and influential politician who may well be New Zealand's next deputy Prime Minister. 2. GayNZ.com's coverage of the situation was defamatory on several points. Despite the blood and thunder public threat from Bill English that he was reaching for his defamation lawyers (thus neatly drawing the attention of the nation's lazier headline writers away from the issue of homophobia and hypocrisy), GayNZ.com has, throughout the preparation of our story and during the aftermath, taken legal advice and believe our handling of the various elements of the story was entirely within the bounds of New Zealand law. 3. Has GayNZ.com named the youth? No, GayNZ.com coverage of this issue has never named the boy. Other media have, including several major news organisations. But it should be noted that anyone following our link to his publicly posted web profile, or Googling a few words from the context of the story, would have identified him very easily. 4. GayNZ.com only ran the story to court publicity. Wrong. This is never a tactic our editorial team would use. In fact the story came at a time, just after the re-build of our front page and the engine which drives it, when many internet search engines had not yet latched on to our new technology. This was seriously disadvantaging our hit rate and accessibility at the time of the story and is only now starting to self-correct. For instance, Google News has finally updated itself in the last day or so. Many people hearing of the controversy through the general media would have had some difficulty sourcing it to us, we were rarely referred to by our correct identity or web address. There would have been much better times to run the story had publicity been our objective. 5. GayNZ.com attacked Mr English's Christian beliefs. We did not, but we did report one glbt group's spokesperson querying whether apparent homophobia may have had a source within Catholic beliefs. Given the English family's Catholicism and successive Popes' teachings against matters homosexual we felt the comment was relevant. 6. GayNZ.com has been trawling the net for kids' postings and hanging out on teenage websites. GayNZ.com has neither the time nor the inclination to trawl any websites. It's not what we do. It should also be noted for the record that Bebo is not a 'teenage' website, it is popular with adults and teenagers alike, although its genesis as a music-based website does seem to skew its users towards the youth market... perhaps this age group is also a little more internet-savvy than older folks. The attempted implication that we are sleazy, or even pedophiles, is neither accurate nor appreciated. 7. How did GayNZ.com hear about the profile? A link to it was forwarded to us by several concerned people who took strong exception to its homophobic content when compared to Bill English's public stances on moral values and parental responsibility. We are unaware of their identities, but as responsible journalists chose to briefly check out what they were highlighting to us. Regardless of their motives, once we had seen the material we assessed its nature and its likely consequences ourselves, independent of any outside influences. 8. GayNZ.com has 'outed' Bill English's son. Outing is the public exposure of a person's private sexuality against their wishes. Mr English's son posted his homophobic tirades in full public view, thus clearly he had no expectation of privacy. This was not an outing and has no correlation with outing a person's sexuality. In effect Mr English's son exposed his own views to the public all by himself. Mr English's inaction and refusal to engage on the matter ensured it would come under even more public scrutiny, somewhere or other, sooner or later. 9. GayNZ.com is alone and out on a limb on this issue. No, we are not. Every glbt welfare and support organisation we have contacted, and all that have volunteered their views, have been supportive of our action. Whilst initial, perhaps knee-jerk, responses from a few individuals seemed to mirror Bill English's spin of it being an unjustified, "sick and intrusive" attack, this was a fleeting view and correspondence since then has been overwhelmingly supportive. In assessing the issue before writing our story, GayNZ.com spoke at some length with the head and deputy head of two highly respected Wellington colleges who were made aware of the identity of the Wellington-based youth and the nature of his comments. They (and other educators we have spoken with since) felt that the issue had to be publicised and that homophobic abuse is demonstrably on the rise amongst their pupils. They attribute this increase in large part to bullying behaviour enabled by the internet and text messaging. Both were prepared to go on the record with their views, but given the subsequent politicising of the story by Mr English's office, and the wide public support we have received from other equally reputable sources, we decided to delay interviewing them on the record. 10. Why has Mr. English's son been singled out? We did not single out the son, per se, but after week after week of lack of contact, acknowledgment or action by Mr English it was a situation we could not ignore. If there had been a way of exposing the lassiez faire attitude of the father about homophobia without pointing towards the identity of the son we would have done that. 11. Family members of politicians should be left alone, shouldn't they? Not necessarily, either in law or media convention. Whilst parliamentarians have a kind of mutual agreement not to bring their families into public debate it is remarkable how many use their apparently happy, well adjusted and supportive families in media statements of photos when it suits them. But there is no protection in law for the immediate families of prominent people. The high profile Hoskings court case some time ago established in case law that the families of prominent people must of necessity have a more limited expectation to privacy than the rest of the population. Which leaves the area of ethics. In the end we boiled it down to a simple decision... either turn a blind eye to the 'Catch-22' situation of a prominent politician ignoring his son's publicly expressed homophobia, thus protecting the homophobic son because of the father's high public office or protecting the father because of his son's youth; or expose the father's hypocrisy, with the likelihood of the homophobic son being identified, but in the process helping to raise the issue of youth-related homophobia existing on the internet because of lack of parental supervision or with parental awareness and this help protect vulnerable gay and lesbian youth. Protect a homophobe or protect glbt youth... for a gay and lesbian website the answer was clear. 12. How do you know the comments were actually posted by English Jnr and not some impostor? At first we didn't. Our first question to Mr English asked if the material was indeed posted by his son. There was no denial, and other aspects of the issue day by day pointed strongly to its being the work of who it said it was. So we chose to take the author's identity at face value. To this day, over a month later, and under intense media scrutiny, no denial has been received. Interestingly, the site disappeared moments after the general media swooped on Mr English's office about the story. As the days pass, still no denial of authorship, and sadly no apology for the content either. You do the math. [Editor's note: Eight days after this feature was published, Bill English publicly admitted that his son was responsible for the homophobic postings.] 13. Were all the comments on the profile we quoted typed by English Jr.? Yes, with one clearly identified exception, all the comments we quoted in our initial news story were placed on the profile page by Bill English's son. Some were original thought, some showed a partial basis in cut and paste. The one exception we quoted was used to illustrate the links from this page to others espousing homophobia and thus give some idea of how this and similar homophobic web pages are often interlinked, thus fostering a culture of homophobia amongst a wider group of people. We also note that none of the people who had accessed the web page appeared to have taken the kid to task over his abusive attitude. Or, if they did their comments had been deleted. 14. There was only one homophobic comment Huh? Some people seemed to choose only to look at the first profile page that appeared on their screen without examining subsequent pages. But there were numerous examples of homophobic, and other, abuse many times throughout the entirety of the profile and discussion thread. 15. These comments were unexceptional and therefore did not warrant GayNZ.com's exposure of them or their source. A number of people have suggested that we made a mountain out of a molehill on this one. National leader John Key suggested that although the publicly posted comments were "pretty rugged... the reality is that this has gone on since kids started talking behind the bike sheds. Part of growing up is expressing yourself." A respected newspaper columnist dismissed the abuse as merely the sort of thing "you could have seen from any 14-year old boy pretty much any day of the week, at any time in history." Others sought to characterise the abuse as comments that could be merely "construed" as homophobic. Construed? Read them again for yourself and ponder "construed." Just because homophobic abuse is pervasive does not make it right or acceptable or any less dangerous. It still blights many lives and has done so throughout history. For most of history women were forced into subservient positions in society... but we now accept that as wrongheaded. For much of history people were persecuted for belonging to the 'wrong' religion, but now we know how evil that was. For much of history ethnic minorities were demeaned and persecuted, we condemn that now. Slavery was at one time broadly accepted, promoted and formed the basis of many major world powers' wealth. Is homophobia to be one of the last and enduring bastions of allowable denigration and torment just because it has historical roots and because kids will be kids? The comments posted by this youth were toxic, abusive, and violent. Those who think they were less than clearly damaging should take a moment to view them through glbt eyes, ears and life experience. 16. GayNZ.com has harmed "the cause." This was an odd one, coming as it apparently did, by email from a few gay men. What apparently monolithic "cause" exactly? This smacks of a belief in "the homosexual agenda" so beloved of anti-gay bigots. But GayNZ.com believes in standing up for the right for our fellow gays and lesbians to live lives free of direct or indirect torment. We believe that parents have a duty to teach their children civil attitudes and to counteract negative influences which lead to homophobia. And we believe we have advanced the debate on these issues positively. 17. How did GayNZ.com try to get in touch with Bill English? Are we sure he knew about the webpage and its comments? In the first instance we emailed a summary of the homophobic and abusive comments, plus a link to the profile page, to three of Mr English's email addresses, including his parliamentary and National party addresses. After over a week of no reply and inaction we re-sent the email, this time cc-ing his Parliament-based communications and media manager. Still no reply. We then left several messages with Mr English's parliamentary office asking to discuss the matter, off the record if necessary. When we finally got through to one of Bill English's closest advisers, prior awareness of our emails was acknowledged. 18. Bill English purposely allowed GayNZ.com to be drawn into going public with his intransigence over his son's homophobia in order to discredit the website or the glbt community. Standing back and allowing things to progress to the point where his son ended up being identified as the author of such vile homophobic abuse seems a very strange way of attacking us or the glbt community and as a tactic would have done him no credit as a caring and responsible and protective parent. No, we can't believe he let this happen on purpose. 19. There are many other "hatreds" out there on the internet, will GayNZ.com show editorial fairness by going after them as well? Not specifically. Our brief is to cover the issues which relate to glbt New Zealanders and to present a reflection of glbt lives in New Zealand. We must use our resources to address in that arena only. In several media interviews and discussions we highlighted that this youth was using his homophobia as a weapon against similarly vulnerable and marginalised 'emo' kids, but others must fight those battles, and we hope they will. 20. GayNZ.com withdrew the story shortly after Bill English issued his threats of legal action. No, we did not. The story disappeared from the large feature box at the top of our front page features section at midnight the night the threats were issued. However, the news story had been showcased there for 24 hours, which is our standard practise for items highlighted in that location. It remained in our Daily News section and the complementary editorial also stayed put in our Latest Features section. Both the news story and editorial, plus subsequent related items, are still there. *** To those who have criticised us I hope the above explanations give you pause for thought. To the many more who have supported us, thank you. - Jay Bennie GayNZ.com content editor Jay Bennie - 4th October 2007