Bernard Gaynor gained national attention in early 2013 when he resigned as a candidate for the Katter Party in the lead up to the federal election.
Controversy had surrounded the staunchly conservative Catholic father of six after he defended Victorian Katter candidate Tess Corbett.
Corbett had said that she viewed pedophiles in the same category as gays and lesbians. The candidate for the Victorian seat of Wannan declared that she didn’t want to see gays and lesbians working in kindergartens.
Gaynor through his support behind his colleague by posting to his Twitter account, ““I wouldn’t let a gay person teach my children and I am not afraid to say it.”
The party quickly dropped Corbett and soon after Gaynor resigned from the party stating that his main issue with the party’s leadership was that they had failed to make a clear stance on abortion while also highlighting that many of the party’s candidates had expressed private views in support of same sex marriage.
Today Gaynor still keeps his “fingers in the game” of politics serving as the State Secretary of Family First in Queensland and sharing his personal views though his website and Twitter account. Gaynor describes himself as a conservative commentator who speaks about the things others are too afraid to bring up. He proudly claims that political correctness will not get in the way of his opinions.
The LGBT community is regularly in Gaynor’s sights, he writes regularly about his opposition to the Australian Military’s agenda of supporting and encouraging LGBTIQ people in the military.
He’s had a long running feud with the Army’s most prominent transgender officer Lieutenant General Cate McGregor. Gaynor does not recognise transgender people in their chosen gender.
Gaynor has also highlighted that gay venues were holding ANZAC Day themed parties on the eve of ANZAC Day in 2014. Gaynor said the homosexual community had been disrespectful of the day of remembrance by turning it into a disgraceful orgy.
OUTinPerth spoke to Bernard Gaynor in early May 2014 for a wide ranging interview that covered his belief that homosexuality should be illegal, why he’s not worried about offending people and his belief that the move towards same sex marriage began with Henry VIII.
While Gaynor had highlighted ANZAC Day events in gay venues in Sydney including The Stonewall Hotel, Midnight Shift and events facilitated by events company In the Dark, his criticism was only aimed at gay venues. OUTinPerth asked if he was equally offended by similar heterosexual orientated themed events, as a quick Google search revealed a plethora of them.
“I don’t think that it’s appropriate on ANZAC Day for heterosexual events to be seen in a similar way…if I did become aware of it, I’d criticise them as well. Also, if they were to happen I think that there would be some strong media condemnation of them as well,” Gaynor said.
“I’m not going to put my hand on my heart and say I’ve gone and searched everywhere across Australia, I haven’t I’ve just done a quick two minute search on Google and that’s what I came across. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other events, and if there are heterosexual events, and it seems that there are, and while that doesn’t surprise me, I do find them offensive as well.”
Gaynor’s focus on the military is understandable he’s been an officer in the army, is a veteran and served in the Army Reserves. His controversial comments have not gone down well with the top brass and he’s currently fighting a recommendation that he be discharged from the army reserves.
While Gaynor is often being offended by homosexuals, we ask him why he chooses to address the LGBTIQ community in a way that many people find equally offensive. Alongside continually addressing transgender people by their former gender and using their former names Gaynor has also written about why he refused to use the terms gay or queer. He acknowledges that he knows that people find being addressed as “homosexuals” offensive but said that he uses the term as an all-encompassing label.
“Well that’s true, I think the homosexual community uses a whole bunch of other words. When I use the word homosexual I use it to as an encompassing term. There are other words that are used like queer or gay. I don’t like using the word gay. If I can help it I’d prefer to use the word homosexual. There’s lesbian and transgender – or whatever it is – but I use the word homosexual as an encompassing term for the whole community,” Gaynor declared.
Gaynor admits that he knows that some of the phrases he uses on his blog like “pansies prancing down Oxford Street” are offensive.
“I think that people who are homosexual probably do find my posts offensive, but that doesn’t mean that they are not truthful. But also I find some of the terms that homosexuals use to describe themselves as offensive anyway. The word “queer” for instance.”
Gaynor agrees that few people in the gay community are likely to ever agree with many of his conservative positions but highlights his belief that the institution of marriage began to fall apart a long time ago. Surprisingly Gaynor travels back 500 years to identify the starting point of the marriage equality movement.
“One of the reasons we have a debate about gay marriage, homosexual marriage, is because the institute of marriage itself has been completely tarnished and flawed in our society. Some people will find this offensive but I liken it to vultures picking over the carcass of a body.
“Divorce and modern machinations of divorce have completely destroyed a fundamental aspect of marriage, and that is that marriage is for life. I’ve written about this before, when Henry VIII made it that marriage no longer meant for life 500 years ago he essentially set in train the motions that have led to gay marriage…it is a slippery slope process.”
We highlighted that same slippery slope argument can be made from different perspectives, you could take the abolishment of slavery in the United States as a starting point leading on to the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement and eventually marriage equality.
Gaynor disagrees arguing that the two examples are completely different.
“I would say the abolishment of slavery came out of an inherently Christian world view and from the earliest day of the church efforts have been made to abolish slavery. It was Christian activists who abolished slavery. Those efforts were made on the idea of the dignity of man,” Gaynor argued.
“In a Christian understanding of the dignity of man, homosexual behaviour is not about building the dignity of man, it actually destroys the dignity of man.”
Given that Gaynor has declared that homosexuality should not be part of society we asked him what status he felt gay people should have, highlighting that Brunei has recently passed a law declaring gay people should be stoned to death. While Gaynor is quick to declare that he is not in favour of killing homosexuals he does think homosexuality should be illegal.
“Personally I think public displays of homosexuality should be illegal. There’s probably not many people who agree with me on that, and I must admit that even a few years ago I was more of the opinion that what happens between two people remained between two people. That’s why I say ‘pubic displays’ because I think there are very serious negative consequences to this behaviour, not only to people but to society as well, that do justify a public stance against it.” Gaynor said.
Gaynor said that he believes that homosexuality should be illegal in Australia and that people should be punished with financial sanctions but more serious offensives may require more serious responses. Gaynor argues that homosexuality should be made illegal so that people opposing it cannot be taken to the Equal Opportunity Commission for speaking out in opposition.
“When it’s not illegal publicly it starts to become protected publicly and that means that people who oppose it, and these people are moral people, [they] start becoming criminals. So you have an inversion of that the law should be for. The law should be about defending truth and justice not a process for defending vice and immorality.” Gaynor said.
For Bernard Gaynor his new project is an organisation that aims to assert conservative values in Australia’s defence forces. Gaynor said The Defence Conservative Action Network is his way of leveling the playing field for the political debate. Gaynor has argued that they defence forces should not participate in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and the military should not highlight its diversity and inclusion organisation.
“What I’ve said to defence is the position of The Conservative Action Network is that defence members should not be engaged in political activities in uniform. That is our strongly held position and we believe that it should go back to its former policies on this matter.
“However, the view we have reluctantly formed is that if we are to be able to campaign on a level playing field with everybody else. So you have to get involved in uniform in political activities because other groups in uniform are involved in political activity.
“If we chose not to be involved, it would be like campaigning with our hands tied behind our backs against other groups.
Last week the group claimed it had had a win over the military stating that all mentions of the LGBTIQ diversity group had been removed from the defence force website. The defence force retorted that it has simply redesigned its webpage and that no content had been changed.
Graeme Watson spoke to Bernard Gaynor in early May 2014.
