Larvatus Prodeo

Family First candidates just can’t help themselves. After Andrew Quah, Ben Jacobsen is the next Family First candidate suffering a case of indecent exposure. The indecency in this case is bigotry as in Jacobsen’s strange request that Liberal candidate for Leichhardt, Charlie McKillop reveal her sexual preference. The reason is that “it reflects the kind of values that will guide someone if they are elected to Parliament.”

For Jacobsen his idea of values, specifically of the family type, include bigotry.

It is interesting to see Family First try and play in the Australian political arena with the values of the American religious right. Such a move is doomed to fail. The reason why such politics work well in the United States stems from a long history of puritanical ideals. We simply don’t have any tradition like that in mainstream Australia. Any austere religiously motivated practices get overwhelmed by Australian’s tendency towards Dionysian pursuits. It is also a reason why the Culture Wars were “lost” by the right. Most issues couldn’t get any traction as the issues were imported from the United States with little understanding of the social history of the cultural battlegrounds.

An interesting feature of the sexually repressive nature of United States politics are the seemingly regular revelation that a strident anti-homosexual politician (invariably Republican) doesn’t mind a bit of same sex action. While there is an obvious sense of schadenfreude with such revelations, it is also quite sad.

Now that Family First have overcome the hurdle of representation via Stephen Fielding, the more they play on the Australian political stage the more is revealed of their religiously motivated agenda.

In the United States, a pleasing aspect of the so called family values politicians that pander to the religious right is that many seem to trip over their own self-righteous feet of clay. Witness the downfall of Larry Craig and Ted Haggard for example.

In Australia, before the last election there was the revelation that Ross Cameron, himself a family values type, had a cheating heart. This election, Family First has fallen foul of some filthy shenanigans with Andrew Quah being dumped as the Family First’s candidate for the seat of Reid.

Quah’s misdeeds involve circulation of pictures around the internet which would lead voters in Reid no doubt which way Quah’s politics swung. He has since been disendorsed as the FF candidate for Reid.

As usual in such incidents, personal responsibility is cast aside in favour of a barely believable statement of denial:

Mr Quah told the Herald yesterday he thought it was possible that he had posed for the compromising photographs. “I might have been drunk off my face or my political enemies might have drugged me.”