Calls for Labor candidate to step down for tweeting ‘Jesus is Gay’
Religious groups, and Coalition MPs, have called for a Labor candidate to be disendorsed by the party after it was revealed that she once tweeted “Jesus is Gay”.
The post suggesting that the Christian figure was gay is just one of several posts allegedly authored by Mich-elle Myers that have upset conservative news outlets, Liberal MPs, and religious groups.
The Daily Telegraph’s federal political reporter James Morrow wrote that Myers tweets about Jesus, posts she made arguing that the Lindt Cafe siege was not a terrorist attack, and her support for changing the date of Australia Day showed that she held “radical leftist views”.
Myers is placed fifth on the Labor party’s senate ticket for New South Wales and is very unlikely to be elected. She deleted her Twitter account prior to running for parliament, but like other candidates her past comments were still captured online.
NSW Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes says the comments are a bad reflection on the leadership of Labor leader Anthony Albanese.
“Anthony Albanese’s hand-picked Senate candidate holds extremely radical views that do not belong in our nation’s parliament,” Hughes told the newspaper.
“It says many things about Mr Albanese’s weak leadership that he thinks these views are acceptable in the Senate.
Myers has responded, apologising for her comments.
“I regret these comments and I’m sorry for any offence they have caused.” she said, while a spokesperson said her past comments do not reflect the views of the party.
The Assistant Minister for Women, Amanda Stoker, says Myers should be dropped from the ticket, because Labor called for Warringah MP Katherine Deves to be disendorsed.
“The should apply the same standards to their own candidates as they have been intend upon forcing on others, including Katherine Deves.”
“It shouldn’t be the case that censorship writ large is required, but I do think it is necessary to confront the reality of the things that we all stand for, and when those things are pretty out there, there should be the same kind of scrutiny of somebody on the left as it is when it’s somebody from the coalition.”
Appearing on Sky News Senator Stoker said Myers should be dropped by Labor because they’ve already declared their standards in relation to Deves, but Deves should not be disendorsed because her underlying argument was acceptable to many people.
Stoker said Deves had “copped a bit of a rough trot from parts of the media” but was now focusing her efforts on the local people of Warringah.
“The position she has held, for which she fundamentally has copped all of this scrutiny and sometimes abuse, is the idea that women’s sport should be for biological women, and the idea that that is a controversial proposition in this day and age is something that itself should trouble.
“It is not necessary in order to be compassionate and caring towards people who struggle with their gender that we abandon conceptions of biology and common sense, and it’s not necessary that we send our girls and our women on to the field for contact sport against people of widely different muscle density and bone density in order to get broken arms and unfair play.”
Senator Stoker said there was a “lack of balance” on how people “of the left” were treated.
Conservative group Family Voice Australia said Myers suggestion that Jesus is gay was “a smear” that showed she was not suitable to hold high office.
OIP Staff
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