Wed 10 Oct 2007 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
National Party deputy leader Bill English has at last admitted that his son authored a homophobic Bebo webpage publicly highlighted by GayNZ.com two weeks ago. He acknowledges that material placed on the internet by the youth was offensive but defends some of the comment as being 'cut and paste' work from other sources. In a statement sent to Express newspaper, English claims "most of the offensive material on the webpage wasn't written by my son. It was cut and pasted from other websites." GayNZ.com's content editor, Jay Bennie, says the information quoted in GayNZ.com's articles was "clearly and directly attributable to the owner of the page." He says GayNZ.com reporters were also aware that some of the offensive stories and comments on the page were cut and pasted from other websites, "but this youth clearly felt those homophobic statements were worth repeating and presented them as representing his own thoughts and attitudes. Of course, our main concern is that his father, a senior politician who has taken a public stance of family values and parental responsibility did not appear to address this during the several weeks we repeatedly drew his, and his staff's, attention to it." When readers initially referred the Bebo webpage to GayNZ.com, a reporter contacted Bill English and his office a number of times for comment over three weeks. However, the original abuse remained on the page and even more homophobic comments were posted. English now says that "due to a misunderstanding, the material was not deleted, and sat on the website for several weeks after it was brought to my attention." The nature of the misunderstanding, or who were the parties to the misunderstanding, are not mentioned in English's statement to Express. English would still not be drawn on whether he will take legal action against GayNZ.com for printing our 'Anti-gay webpage linked to Nat MP's son' story. His defensive statement appears to have stopped short of an apology to gays and lesbians for the abuse and his parental lack of action over it. Ref: GayNZ.com, Express (m)
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Wednesday, 10th October 2007 - 3:17pm