(singing) Ooooooh-klahoma where your rep is really anti-gay...

It's moments like this where I wonder where to draw the line - again. I had a conversation with dodgyhoodoo once some while ago where, while talking about I think the BNP, I asked whether it was right to curtail someone's right to free speech. Sure, it sucks that people hold these kinds of views, and that they air them so freely and so vituperatively, but to be perfectly fair, if I turned around and said that people who have nothing better to do than to defend a narrow-minded, bigoted view of sexuality and religion as put forward by a work of religious literature that has been mistranslated, misconstrued, misquoted, had bits left out of it and constantly contradicts itself are sad, sorry human beings who mean nothing but harm for the planet at large and really should find something productive to do with their time (like, for example, a terrible lot of psychotherapy), people who hold the beliefs I'm speaking out against will find it offensive and want me to shut up. It's natural to want someone who's vociferously disagreeing with views you hold as sacred to stop disrespecting your beliefs. However, if we want to live in a culture where free speech survives, we're going to have to live with people talking what we view as total shit.

However, so are they. More to the point, people who hold hatemongering paranoiac bigotry as something to talk about so ... grandly are going to have to live with the consequences of how they use their right to free speech. Example, Sally Kerns.

See, what she doesn't seem to get - or possibly what she doesn't actually care about - is the fact that the media is everywhere. The fact that she didn't say that to the media doesn't matter. The fact that she said it anywhere but in the privacy of her own home, to her own family (and not even that's a guarantee) means that it is open to public scrutiny. It's not fair, maybe, but it's true - if you're in the public eye, you're in it. If you're representing your city, state and/or country, your words and actions continue to represent that regardless of where you are or who you're talking to. That's how it works. You are a representative, therefore you represent.

So if you're a political candidate who stands on a platform of family values and you're sleeping around with your secretary, yes it should be known. I don't think you should necessarily be impeached for it, but it should be known, because you're violating the very platform upon which you're standing and the people have a right to know that you're a hypocrite. It's a part of the decision-making process, looking at the man or woman behind the politician, because the man or woman will always win out over the professional - always. On the flip side of that, if you're not standing on a platform of family values then it's none of anyone else's business necessarily, but you still have to expect that people are going to be interested and judge you on the basis of your actions. That is what you sign up for when you're representing a large body of people. End of statement.

Likewise, if you're going to end up talking shit about not one but two groups of people specifically (in this case, homosexuals and Muslims, though there's scope for saying that Kern's statements were judging any non-Christians and the school system as a whole), you have to expect that people are going to hear about it and make their own judgement calls on your words. If they don't match up with your platform, then you're fucked. If you haven't made a public call on where your political views are in relation to that, you're still fucked because if that's all you've ever said about what you believe, it's now known that that is what you believe. And if you have followed that line all along ... well, people shouldn't be surprised and you've got nothing to worry about - you were elected on that basis and it's therefore nothing to be ashamed of, if you truly believe it.

Truth in politics. It never happens, but it will always come to light in the end, more and more as technology advances and people are easier to eavesdrop on and record. I'm not saying that violation of privacy is right. However, fifty-odd people is not privacy, and if it hadn't been recorded, you can bet one of those fifty would have gone to the papers anyway. People can't hide behind the 'I didn't say it to the press' defence because it doesn't hold water; anything you say to anyone can get to the press one way or another; words have consequences, more so the more power you hold.

So ... Sally Kerns, ladies and gentleman. This is what she chooses to do with her right to free speech.