I can’t really add anything more to this horrid, nasty bit of homophobe-baiting from Bob Katter. These vicious haters’ tortured logic is enough to render any criticism somewhat pointless, like kicking a dent in a car that’s just slammed head-on into a truck and then side-swiped by a passing freight train. Queenslanders don’t care about gays! They’re worried about actual people with actual families who have actual problems. Not gays.

Except that they do, they really, really do. They care so much that this is how they plan to win elections, with appeals to rank bigotry. It’s just…. yuck.

I really didn’t want to harp on about it because I’d already had my fill yesterday. I Tweeted, “right, so I’ve had a good old belly laugh about the parlous state of Queensland politics and ripped into some homophobes. Now breakfast.” I felt like people knew that, wherever the imaginary “line” is, they crossed it.

I don’t care what your personal view about gay marriage is, but I’m putting myself in the shoes of a young gay kid in some rustic Queensland farm town and imagining how hurtful it is to see a vision of my future portrayed as a grainy, sick, blurred-out, pederastic freak. And people wonder why LGBT teenagers – beautifully imperfect, flawed and insecure, desperate to be accepted, teenagers – recycle the hate that’s put on them every single day, and turn it destructively inwards.

Campbell Newman didn’t make it any better for himself by condemning the ad, not for the obvious homophobia it betrayed, but because he’s only interested in “normal” families.

Well.

And I was particularly revolted by Wendy Francis of the Australian Christian Lobby, who said she couldn’t work out what was offensive about the ad. Wendy Francis, the woman who went batshit insane over a public health campaign where two men were depicted in a warm embrace.

“I’m not sure why they find it offensive. I was watching it myself on TV this morning, saying ‘What is it that the gay activists actually find offensive? I’d be interested to know even from other people what it is that they find offensive because I didn’t personally know.”

I guess it’s okay to acknowledge the existence of gays, and for children to see it, if the objective of seeing them is to engender hate and fear.

It’s just… yuck.