The time has come for the New Zealand news-media to close-down Family First by starving them of publicity.

Imagine if every week or so, you produced a ‘Press Release’ and sent it to the varying media-outlets, and then ‘hey-presto’ automatically they went ahead and published your pet-subjects & musings.

No questions asked, nor justification needed – the fact you think you are right and someone-else happens to be wrong - is enough for these releases to see day-light.

Your fringe pet hates & loves don’t need to be of concern to the vast majority of New Zealanders either – they will still turn-up on page four of most daily newspapers.

It could be something as trivial as an advert for Viagra that get’s up your nose, or the promotional activity of a Pizza company.

As ridiculous as this scenario first appears, it happens to be the current reality of the forth estate in New Zealand.

Hardly a week goes by without the irrelevant, evangelical pressure-group Family First issuing a press-statement of some-kind – all of which are published, mostly without critical review and ‘of right.’

Last week it was promoting a return to corporal punishment in New Zealand Schools.

On receipt of the latest release, not one journalist asked pertinent questions like “will this mean the return of the days when 5 year-old Kiwi’s were strapped by teachers?”

Instead of facing critical analysis the ‘release’ and its predecessors were published all but verbatim.

Here is a brief ‘Readers Digest’ list of the sort of narrow-minded, predictable stuff pouring out of Family First, that has managed to garnish both air-time and type-set over the years since the group set-up in 2006, largely as a result of the former champion of its causes, Graham Capill, being imprisoned for child rape and indecencies.

Return of corporal punishment in schools, making prostitution illegal again, ban on abortion, leading advocates for the right of parents to smack their children, banning in-flight movies which are not G rated, banning the TV Series Californication, wanting Gays to be prevented adopting children, promoting abstinence for teens, encouraging mums to stay at home and look after their kids, banning Boobs on Bikes, preventing brothels setting-up in residential areas, chastisement of Broadcasting Standards being too liberal, fighting the right for people to die in dignity, wanting cervical cancer vaccine distribution to be banned, continuing a ban on Easter Trading, placing the rights of married couples above those who choose a civil-union, varying attacks on The N.Z Family Planning Association to do with the distribution of contraception and access to abortion to the point they have even formed a splinter-group dedicated to the closure of Family Planning , fighting the right of parents to choose the sex of their child where there is a medical reasons like a genetic predisposition to a deformity, banning the video game ‘Grand Theft Auto’, highlighting child sexulisation e.g., pretend bra’s for 10 year olds, demanding the judge who let a naked-cyclist off with a warning should lose his job, wanting a Wellington’s shops adverts for sex-toys and bondage gear banned, fatherless families leads to more crime, wanting the internet to be censored, demanding a controversial Church bill board be removed last Christmas, denying Gays the right to marry or have a civil-union, wanted radio adverts for ‘the morning after pill’ to be banned, banning adult magazines in petrol station, banning The Atheist Bus Advert Campaign, getting a ‘clothing optional beach’ closed etc.

The list goes on ad nauseam, but you get a fair idea of the type of stuff Family First are all about & the New Zealand media can’t get enough of this sort of crap.

‘Banning’ and ‘prevention’ are high on Family First’s agenda.

Who takes seriously a group, with less membership than my suburban soccer club, who want to ban on one of the world’s most popular video-games and censor the internet so we can become like North Korea?

A sad minority, group that wants homosexuality to again be outlawed in New Zealand and nationwide cancer-prevention and birth-control policies scrapped.

A petty-minded bunch of bible-bangers with nothing better to do than complain to BP and Shell about girly-magazines on the shelves of their outlets.

An indication of just how out-of-touch Family First are with mainstream New Zealanders - they would rather a couple had a child live with birth-defects than allowing them access to medical-science that could prevent these defects occurring in the first place.

These Old Testament zealots even see it as their ordained ‘right’ to tell other Christians what they can and can’t have outside their church!

The New Zealand Media should treat any sort of broadcast coming from Family First with the derision and scorn it deserved, by placing it straight in the rubbish-bin.

Above all the media should stop giving these bigoted, creationist, flat-earthers, ‘the oxygen’ they need to exist – publicity.

Reports authors state Family First mislead N.Z Public

When does Family First actually get something right?

This ideologically driven pressure-group is not gifted at picking winners and has failed dismally to achieve the goals it has set out to do = a society based on The Old Testament.

Time after time Family First and their ubiquitous spokesman Bob McCoskie shoot-off at the mouth (often in tongues) rather than doing a semblance of research & thinking-through the consequences of their actions.

This time last years they claimed Divorce Rates were harming the New Zealand Economy. One small fact seemed to have escaped their paid researchers - but not myself. Taking their Leviticus logic to its natural conclusion, the fastest way to reduce the so-called harmful effects of divorce is for more Kiwis to become atheists – who are comparatively less represented than Christians in statistics.

Family First wanted Kiwi’s to boycott The Hells Pizza chain (2006) over their condom promotion – giving their targets more free publicity than they ever could have possibly paid for – increasing their sales and establishing their brand.

The year prior they demanded the T.V Program ‘Californication’ be taken off our screens – which again had just the opposite effect – alerting the public there was graphic sex scenes on free-to-view state T.V resulting in ratings sky-rocketed.

So you can firmly place where Family First falls in the ideological spectrum Bob McCoskie personally wanted The Simpson's taken off our screens in 2005 due to foul language.

Over the years bans and boycotts are Family Firsts modus operandi & the list grows year by year they crudely attempt to sledge-hammer their so-called ‘family values’ on-to a reluctant society.

‘Boobs on Bikes’ – should be banned.

‘AIDS pamphlets depicting genitalia ’ – should be banned

‘Web Site Miss Bimbo’ – should be boycotted

‘Girls kissing Girls Radio Competition’ – banned and boycotted.

Now the latest flummox in a long line of them, is their failled attempt to repeal smacking legislation. Family First were one of the major drivers of the appalling worded referendum held this year that wasted 9 million dollars and achieved - yet again - nothing.

This weeks released report commissioned by the incoming National Government into whether smacking laws were effective and if inconsequential smacking by parents had lead to criminal prosecution (which Family First claimed was the reality) has lead the authors of the report to single-out Family Firsts central-role in scare-mongering.

Yet, again Family First got their facts horribly wrong and many of the cases they had championed as being evidence of ‘good parents being targeted’ were at best selective and as one of the authors Nigel Latta told New Zealanders “that can lead it to throwing weight behind parents who don't deserve it and in so doing mislead the public.”

Latta went on to tell of one case Family First had ‘backed’ on Radio New Zealand that they had solicited support for their cause by highlighting “a case were a parent prosecuted for hitting a child with a pillow " but went on to clarify that “at face value ...an extreme over-reaction" but then introduced the real-facts that “it turned out the (perpetrator) had more than 70 convictions for violent offences.”

It was just the bit about the pillow-slapping Family First hollered-about to the local news-media – not the other 70 plus cases of assaults the abuser was found to have perpetrated.

In-fact ALL the cases Family First forwarded cases to Mr Latta and his committee to review as part of some pattern of over-zealous authorities prosecuting innocent parents – in not one of them did Latta feel Child, Youth and Family and police behaved in an appropriate fashion.

Latta is scathing of the Family Firsts selective reporting and its scaremongering – telling McCoskie and his rabble they were at times duped into believing false testimony and, as I said in my introduction, not doing their homework.

Thanks to Latta’s honesty and frankness New Zealanders now know Family First, a so-called Christian based organisation, were happy to back convicted scum-bag child-abusers to achieve their narrow political goals.

Sex Education for 10 Year-Olds is a Good-Thing

It is irrefutable, children are maturing younger than ever.

Coupled with this, today’s children often have access to the internet, social networking-sites, cell-phones etc exposing them to subject-matter & concepts, which were once the preserve of adults only.

Whilst it is fair to say ‘one size does not fit all’, it is also necessary to educate younger and younger children ‘the facts of life’.

The Sexuality Road, is a new resource for teachers of late-primary and intermediate-age children, being launched by Family Planning in New Zealand.

Part of the resource is not just the ‘birds and bees’, but also other relevancies, like protecting yourself from cyber deviates, as opposed to the traditional ones with boiled-lollies.

Teaching Kiwi 10 year olds about sex, has drawn condemnation from the predictable quarters.

Family First and The Catholic Church.

The national-spokesperson for Family First, Bob McCoskrie, is one of only a small minority of New Zealanders, ignorant enough to believe the third planet from the sun is 6,000 years old.

Why the fuck news-agencies would give him and his small group of Biblical literal-translators, any coverage what-so-ever is beyond me?

What credibility does a group which wants the rest of society to believe in unicorns, giants, six-day creation of the planet, 900 year old men etc, when it comes to educating children in the year 2009?

Now to the arch-revisionists, The Catholic Church, and their stand on sex-education.

Has no-one pointed-out the age-of-consent in The Vatican City is just 12 years-old? Therefore to start-with The New Zealand Catholic Church, would be better directing its moral outrage towards head-office in Rome rather than N.Z’s Family Planning Service.

Family Planning, have never attempted to legitimise 12 year-olds having sex – The Pope has! Kids screwing kids is going-on under The Vaticans own roof!

Reading between the lines, perhaps there is another underlying reason, why The Catholic clergy would be up-set New Zealand children are maturing so quickly, and getting ‘boundaries’ established?

Curse those secular liberals for teaching Catholic children, sucking Father Patrick’s willy, isn’t normal behaviour.

Far better Catholic children are kept ignorant, for as long as possible, and in awe of the superstitious clap-trap, than coming to grips with modern-society & all its foibles.

Faced with a changing-world and social environment, both these ‘flat-earth’ groups show just how ignorant they are as to the realities of growing-up today.

Join Family Fist Today!

Family Fist, is concerned about the breakdown in community standards in New Zealand, discriminating against anyone who is not heterosexual, married in a church, or enjoys sex.

Unlike our namesakes, Family Fist, is proud to say, we are a Christian organisation, fighting for the principals outlined in The Bible.

We are big-on Slavery and Polygamy.

New Zealand is a country founded on these principals of Christianity, and this heritage is being threatened by liberals, socialists & atheists.

Boy, I’d love to see their faces when they get to hell.

Don’t start us, when it comes-to Muslims, they’ll burn for eternity as well.

New Zealanders need a voice, when it comes, to maintaining ordained Old Testament values, like parents beating children with rods, or what-ever you can lay your hands-on, when you get in a rage with your two year old.

If the thought of two men-kissing or Helen Clark turns-your-guts…..Family Fist is for you!

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Family First: For God & Country

Family First are currently fronting a massive media campaign in an attempt to achieve the 300,000 threshold necessary to initiate a referendum. The petition needed 280,275 signatures to force a referendum, but recently fell short after 13% were excluded because they were either illegible, the signatory's date of birth could not be confirmed, or involved people who signed multiple times (perhaps the liberal application of the wooden spoon is needed to remind signatories to be honest?)

Family Firsts latest ‘beef’: the new smacking law.

All this effort, expense and melodrama for a non-binding referendum, seems wasted to most neutrals. A recent N.Z Police report stated they receive on average, just one complaint per week in relation to smacking. Scaremongering ‘the courts would be full of cases of good parents being treated as criminals’ have come to nought. In fact based on these statistics, and the disinterest by N.Z Police to change the new law, you’d have to wonder what all the fuss is all about?

To background this, Family First are a thinly veiled Christian Political pressure group. Their leader Bob McCoskie (pictured below) says his organisation is “the voice of the family, it’s not the voice for Christianity”. Then in the next breath goes on to say “but you’re right, people involved in it have a Christian background”. That’s like Martin Bormann stating “Hey, we are not Nazi’s, we’re National Socialists”.

To give Family First their dues, they are very media savy and have made headlines with some regularity & some what laboriously in the same vein as past self-styled moral guardians. The Media know where to go to ‘get a bite’ and I guess it’s a bit hard these days getting interviews with Graham Capill (incarcerated) & Patricia Bartlett (r.i.p). Family First fill this ‘chicken little’ vacuum nicely.

F.F is the group which wanted the public to boycott Hells Pizza chain after their ‘Condom’ promotion. Personally I would have thought the name alone would have been enough to scare-off Bob and his righteous bunch.

F.F wanted ‘Californication’ taken from our T.V screens and the way to do this was to rally support, in the form from a boycott on advertisers who dared showed their wares during breaks in the programme.

F.F protested against ‘The Boobs on Bikes’ and tried to ruin the titillation (pun intended) for bunking schools-boys.

F.F successfully had an Aid’s Foundation magazine advert banned. Those naughty guys at the Foundation had a picture of a penis of all things. And god forbid, to make thing worse – it was regaling in a bright coloured condom!

F.F warned parents of teenagers of the evils of the internet by targeting www.missbimbo.com . Never heard of it? Well neither had I. But after a quick preview, it didn’t make my muster in terms of porn content so it won’t be going on my ‘favourites’. F.F didn’t outright ask to ban the site, rather ‘filter’ it.

Bob himself, complained to The Broadcasting Standards Authority in 2005 about the use of the words “ass” & “wanker” in an episode of the cartoon The Simpsons. BSA dismissed the complaint ruling the words we used in a satirical rather than abusive manner. This is the view most balanced New Zealanders would take to comedy.

So you’ll see from their track record, F.F are right into bans, boycotts and censorship.

The exception being: smacking. On the subject of belting ones own child in the privacy of ones home, F.F have the audacity to trot-out the line “this is Nanny State telling us what to do”.

Parents have a god given right to smack their brats, but not to settle down in their lounges and watch some crappy melodrama, staring the guy out of the X-Files, who’s got ‘a thing’ for nuns.

There’s of course a grand reason why F.F carry on in this contradictory & duplicitous fashion. It’s called ‘The Bible’. Biblical texts are F.F’s sole compass and where it points F.F tear off like a rabid pack of hounds chasing a fox.

‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ sound familiar to anyone?

F.F camouflage their agenda behind warm fuzzy terms like - ‘traditional values’.

They want us to return to those romantic by-gone days (re-runs of The Walton’s anyone?) and get families eating dinner together. Never mind if dad takes his belt to the kids for not eating their brussel-sprouts.

One thing that get’s any Christian Pressure group frothing at the mouth, is homosexuality, and F.F is no different.

“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” [Leviticus 20:13]

Now F.F are politically astute enough not to come straight out and ‘doom those evil gays & lesbians to hells eternal flames’. Instead they veil their agenda under headings like ‘Children Deserve Better’. in which they outline principals in flowery terms like ‘the natural family is the union of a man or a woman’.

Loving Parents can only be ones that are married. End of story.

And don’t dare mention ‘Civil Unions’. Dear oh dear. Unmarried couples will never do.

They also take delight telling the heathen secular community what to do with their reproductive organs. Putting them into condoms isn’t one of them.

F.F rallied against teens being vaccinated for cervical cancer - because it could be unsafe for the woman’s ‘moral character’. A comforting thought to cling to for the victims & their families struck down by this killer.

Effectively if Family First can’t get you to accept the word of Jesus - they’ll pressure politicians legislate accordingly.

One can only hope (praying is naturally a waste of time) Family First will go the way of The Christian Heritage Party.

Oblivion or behind bars.

Footnote; More evidence of the ineptitude of ecclesiastical politicians came with parliamentary vote to make the smacking an offence. Let’s not forget Gordon Copeland gave his reason for leaving United Future, as a difference of opinion on the yet to be passed smacking bill. But where was the freshly independent MP Copeland, when the bill was being passed and the vote was being taken? He wasn’t even in the house! That’s right he missed the final vote.