Sideswipe

This couple must be more suited than their notice would suggest.

While the Civil Union Bill debate gathers steam - and intellectual rigour with the delivery of a jar of poo to the office of David Benson-Pope - US television journalist Chris Matthews makes sense interviewing the Rev Jerry Falwell on his current affairs programme Hardball:

MATTHEWS: How did they get to be gay, though?

FALWELL: Well, we probably differ there.

MATTHEWS: I'm asking.

FALWELL: But I think all behaviour is chosen.

MATTHEWS: I'm open. I don't know.

FALWELL: I think that ...

MATTHEWS: Did you choose to be heterosexual?

FALWELL: I did.

MATTHEWS: You chose it? You thought about it and you came up with that solution? That lifestyle?

FALWELL: Put it this way. I was taught as a child that's the right way to ...

MATTHEWS: But did you feel an attraction toward women?

FALWELL: Oh, of course.

MATTHEWS: When people are born and they find themselves having an attraction to somebody from the same sex, do you think that's a choice?

FALWELL: I think you can experiment with any kind of perversity and develop an appetite for it, just like you can food.

MATTHEWS: You don't think it's nature? You think it's nurture.

FALWELL: I don't think any - I don't think anybody is born a bank robber or born a hostile left-winger or a hostile right-winger or gay or a promiscuous heterosexual. I think there comes a time in childhood where environment may be a part of it, whatever, teaching, instruction, one chooses, I will do this or that. And that's why good, godly parenting ...

MATTHEWS: How old were you when you chose to be heterosexual?

FALWELL: Oh, I don't remember that.

MATTHEWS: Well, you must, because you say it's a big decision.

FALWELL: Well, I started dating when I was about 13.

MATTHEWS: And you had to decide between boys and girls. And you chose girls.

FALWELL: I never had to decide. I never thought about it.

(Source: wonkette.com via David Farrar's kiwiblog.co.nz)

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The post always gets through ... or does it? A reader writes to say a package sent from Henderson to Rotorua on July 16, 2003, was returned to the sender last Monday - and wonders where it has been?

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A beat-up from the British Mirror: "Furious BNP [British National Party] racists walked out of their own Christmas party - because the DJ was black. Party-going bigots were stunned when he turned out to be black. BNP organiser Bob Garner admitted yesterday: 'Everyone was - a bit alarmed when he turned up with his lights and console. A lot of people weren't happy. I wasn't, really. One or two walked out.' Garner added: 'There was a bit of a cock-up. The chap who booked him didn't realise. The DJ sounded white on the phone.' Labour MP Martin Salter commented: 'This just shows they'll never be a legitimate political party'."