Who is the better family man, David Campbell or the reporter who outed him?

This leaves me with a tough decision at 6pm. I like to watch one of the commercial stations' news before switching over to SBS's World News. I'd already taken a vow not to watch the Channel 9 news ever again after it was used as an extended advertisement for its crappy Underbelly series, with the only "news" footage being 30 to 40 year old vision of Robert Trimboli. Now it looks like I'm going to have to boycott Channel 7 as well. As Andrew Bolt has pointed out, the journalist involved may have had a vendetta against Campbell relating to his own run in concerning the use of a ministerial car and driver. (I think it is worth while pointing out again that a minister of the Crown in New South Wales is perfectly entitled to use his government car for private purposes, as long as he drives it himself.) Finally, it's funny the number of times that lefties have solemnly advised me that they can't abide conservative commentators like Bolt or Miranda Devine, partly because they are such anti-gay homophobes. Only problem being though is that clearly they are not. It's obvious in reading what they write. One can only conclude that their critics haven't bothered to take the time to find out for themselves and are relying on what others have said to make up their minds and form their opinions. But such is our brave and free-thinking intelligentsia! I’m entirely with Miranda Devine about Channel 7’s tawdry excuse for outing Roads Minister David Campbell as gay: Under attack yesterday for its reporting, one justification offered by Seven is that Campbell was hypocritically posing as a family man. “He’s represented himself to the people of Keira as a family man,” Walters told the ABC, “even going to the extent of sending Christmas cards to his constituents highlighting the fact that he is a man of family values. This is about pretence, it’s about integrity, it’s about character.” But why can’t Campbell have a picture of his wife and children on his Christmas cards, like any other father? Married in 1977 at the age of 19 to Edna, with whom he has two sons, now in their late 20s, Campbell grew up in the blokey blue-collar Wollongong suburb of Corrimal, where even in the swinging ‘70s a gay lifestyle was not an easy option for a man who liked to fit in. And at 19, perhaps he loved Edna so much he could not bear to lose her despite any conflicts he might have felt sexually. No one knows what personal temptations he has had to overcome in his life, and that is entirely his business… Since Channel 7 has declared it fine to moralise publicly about the private lives of people, here’s one measuring stick that puts Campbell way out in front of Adam Walters, the journalist who so viciously exposed him, in what may possibly be a personal get-square. Campbell fathered two children with his wife and raised them in a stable, and we presume loving, family. Waters, however, has fathered three children with three women and has not stayed with any of them. That, in my opinion, is much more reprehensible than Campbell sneaking off to a gay bathhouse, and of far graver consequence. Andrew Bolt

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