For those requiring a daily rush of outrage in order to justify all the trigger warnings they put up surrounding their safe zones, last week was a good one.
A big nasty sign had been spotted in a small lane of dystopian Melbourne that displayed a horrible and homophobic message against same sex couples.
Outrage!
Apparently. Despite the usual suspects within the Media Elite stating that Melbourne was plastered with these posters, no other posters were ever found and Channel 10 news have subsequently been accused of doctoring pictures in order to justify their headlines.
Normally about now, your average conservative commentator would be making copy about how the Left are the gift that keeps giving and how their poorly conceived attempts to sway public opinion only make the task of filling a weekly column so much easier.
Except – and your author here openly confesses to having watched maybe too many spy movies recently and/or being slightly dosed with caffeine – when you take a deeper look things get a bit weirder.
The poster shows two ‘rainbow’ coloured belts being held by two menacing male figures in front of a seated and crying child. The body of the text claims ‘92% of children raised by Gay Parents are abused. 51% have depression. 72% are obese.’ There is more, but the driving theme is that gay couples should be not allowed to have children.
Now, if this poster is actually what the Outrage!(tm) industry claims it to be, then it was carefully designed by homophobic members of the NO vote designed to spread homophobia.
Alternatively, if this is actually a con job produced by YES-leaning types designed to show the NO vote movement as homophobic types trying to spread homophobia, and hence prove that No voters are homophobic types with nothing but fear on which to base their arguments, then, ummm, hang on, where are they going with this?
We get into a sort of cascading, self-referencing loop-of-ouroboros-type (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros) levels. No Voters just hate gay couples without reason and here are some fake posters to prove how hate-filled they are, complete with some hateful claims of child abuse.
‘92% of children raised by Gay Parents are abused.’
This is the open claim on this fake/non-fake poster.
Is this statistic true?
No idea. Your author is only a font of knowledge when he can be arsed, do your own research you lazy buggers and, more importantly, in this context it doesn’t matter.
What is important in this situation is that this claim, true or false, has just been placed before us and now at some sort of level this idea of abuse of children by gay couples is going to be considered. Is it true? What if it isn’t? What if it is? What if the number is much lower?
Maybe it is only 34% abused, but is a 34% abuse rate something to be ignored?
We are now getting into the famous Big Lie territory. It no longer matters if this poster and its claims are completely fabricated bollocks, as that sliver of cautious doubt is still floating somewhere, and then, as we pass around the tinfoil and compare hat sizes, we have to ask exactly who really made this ‘fake’ poster. If it was really a YES vote stunt then can we accept that wasn’t really a massive double bluff by a publicity-savvy No camper, and Dan Leach-McGill, the man who first announced this poster via Twitter, is a deep cover traditionalist, or is it simply that the morally superior Left are too driven by hatred of those who disagree with them to fully think out the implications of their own actions.
In Tinfoil we trust.