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Act Leader Jamie Whyte stands by incest comments – NZ Herald

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New Act Leader Jamie Whyte is standing by his comments that incestuous relationships between consenting adults should not be illegal and says it would be “intellectually corrupt” of him not to be honest when asked such questions.

In an article published on The Ruminatorwebsite, [see http://ruminator.co.nz/mr-ryght/] former philosophy lecturer Dr Whyte was asked whether the state should intervene if adult siblings wanted to marry each other.

“Well personally, I don’t think they [the State] should”, he replied, adding it was “a matter of almost no significance because it just doesn’t happen”.

Dr Whyte told the Herald his response was based on his belief that: “I don’t think the state should intervene in consensual adult sex or marriage, but there are two very important elements here – consensual and adult”.

“I wonder who does believe the state should intervene in consensual adult acts?”

He said he was “very opposed” to incest.

“I find it very distasteful I don’t know why anybody would do it but it’s a question of principle about whether or not people ought to interfere with actions that do no harm to third parties just because they personally wouldn’t do it.”

He did not believe the increased risk of congenital disorders in children from incestuous relationships was a valid reason for it to illegal.

” The probability of having some problem with the children is greater when the mother is over the age of 35 but I’ve never heard anyone suggest that anyone over the age of 35 shouldn’t be allowed to have sex.”

His view was not Act policy and “nobody who votes for Act has anything to fear”.

Dr Whyte who was elected Act Leader earlier this month but officially takes over from John Banks this weekend said he was not prepared to avoid difficult questions like that about incest as other politicians might.

“Maybe I should, but it seems to me the people who find ways around it and avoid it are being less virtuous than me… I would have to be inconsistent, I would have to be intellectually corrupt.”

Source

Full story see:

Act Leader Jamie Whyte stands by incest comments. Article by Adam Bennett. Published 27/02/14

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11210373

Note:

According to The Ruminator (26/02/14), Jamie holds a PhD in Philosophy from Cambridge and his résumé includes Management Consulting and writing for The Times and Wall Street Journal.

Ted Dawe Should Be Stripped Of Prestigious NZ Post Children’s Book Award – says Sue Reid (bookseller, mother)

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In a media release issued today Family First NZ, a registered charity, is

calling on NZ Post to strip author Ted Dawe of a prestigious award he received as best children’s author for his book Into the River. The media release states:

Book Should Be Stripped Of Prestigious Children’s Book Award – Mother

Review by Sue Reid from Masterton – a mother, bookseller, and previously a

columnist for the Wairarapa Times-Age.

As a parent and bookseller I was concerned to see Into the River by Ted Dawes win the recent NZ Post Children’s Book Award 2013. I have since read the book (from cover to cover) and I now enclose a review.

Devon (a.k.a. Te Arepa) is the central character of Dawes’ book. He lives on the East Coast of North Island NZ and experiences family / community dysfunction. At age 14 he goes to Auckland and attends a boarding school there. The school has a ‘pecking order’ of older students (not bullying) but graphic violent assaults carried out on the younger students. Fear and intimidations uphold the social order. It is here that the c-word is used extensively along with f-word (I don’t use these words personally and would certainly not be allowing my children or expect school students to use them, so why should I be reading them in a children’s book!)

Devon meets Steph (a boy) at this school and they become ‘allies-brothers-in-arms’ but Steph is harbouring secrets…and this is where the adult themes really take hold in the book. Steph is having an affair with his music teacher, Willie, along with having an affair with his father’s work colleague (who is a father himself). i.e. two separate paedophiles sexually abusing a 14 year old.

On a holiday back to East Coast, Devon has a graphic sexual encounter with young single mum (Tania) – twice…the second time whilst her young baby is in the room and who starts to mimic her mother’s sounds of arousal! (yet another scene normalising paedophilia.)

Back to school and Steph takes Devon to see their music teacher Willie during the weekend. Willie takes the boys to an isolated beach and they swim naked, then smoke a joint. The session finishes back at Willie’s house where the boys strip, and photos are taken of the boys (more sexual abuse)….these photos are added to a large pile of photos of naked boys.

Willie is one of the teachers that leads a school camp to Waiheke Island and both Steph and Devon are opportunistic to sneak graphic sexual encounters.

The teachers in ‘control’ of camp lead the students in drug taking of ecstasy (drug abuse) and ends with a night swim complete with naked teacher and student engaging in an incident of statutory rape (yet more sexual abuse). No teacher holds any student accountable and it is a vile misuse of a teacher’s position and power.

As a parent and as a bookseller, I feel that the week’s earlier comments in the media about the book were tame. This book is far worse than I ever imagined. It deals with graphic sexual content and paedophilia. Explicit descriptions of drug taking glorify the abuse of drugs, and there is the misuse of adult power and sinister manipulation of 14 year olds. I find these ‘themes’ abhorrent, and definitely not the content or style that suits a children’s book. The book won in the 13-plus age category but the book is “aimed at 15-plus”, but I would not suggest this book to a 15 year old. In fact, not to any school age person. Many adults would find it highly offensive and upsetting. Our children live in a highly sexualised, immoral environment – many commentators lament that fact, and yet here we have a repulsive, graphic book that offers nothing in the way of hope, inspiration or how to have a healthy personal relationship. All ‘hook-ups’ were based on animalistic drives…nothing else, and is void of any kinship.

The book should be stripped (pardon the pun) of this prestigious children’s book award.

PLEASE NOTE: Family First has made a complaint to Censorship Compliance at the Dept. Internal Affairs requesting the book to be classified.

We are also calling on NZ Post to withdraw the Award.

ENDS

Graphic sexual content in winning children’s book defended by chief judge

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Detailed descriptions of sex acts, coarse language and scenes of drug-taking are at the heart of why a novel was voted the best children’s book of the year, the award’s head judge says.

Ted Dawe’s Into the River won the top honour at the annual New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards.

However, its racy content has led one bookstore to refuse to stock it, and award organisers are sending “explicit content” stickers to all booksellers to warn potential buyers.

The book uses expletives including the c-word and depicts drug use and sex scenes, including one where a baby mimics the sounds of intercourse.

The chief judge of the awards, author Bernard Beckett, said Into the River was in the young adult category, for ages 14 to 18, and was aimed at those aged 15 and older.

The content that had offended some needed to be taken in context, he said….

Bob McCoskrie, of lobby group Family First, claimed the author and judges were out to “pollute the moral innocence of kids”.

“I think every New Zealand parent would be saying, ‘What were the judges thinking?’ This is an adult book that even adults would find offensive.”

For full story see:

Otago Daily Times

Graphic content in winning children’s book defended

http://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/263125/graphic-content-winning-childrens-book-defended

NZ Post Judges and author “are out to pollute the moral innocence of kids” says Family First NZ

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Family First NZ, a registered charity, has issued a media release calling on NZ Post to withdraw an award from a children’s book author

30 June 2013

Call for NZ Post To Withdraw Award From Book

Family First is calling on NZ Post to withdraw their support and the award from Ted Dawe’s Into the River book which won top prize in the annual New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards

“This is an offensive and sexually explicit book which is completely inappropriate for young people, will be shocking to most New Zealand parents, and shows that the judges of the Awards have completely lost the plot,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

“We were shocked to see the graphic sexual nature of the book and the foul language, and horrified to know that it is now an ‘award-winning’ book being stocked in school libraries and targeted at young people.”

“I think every New Zealand parent would be saying ‘what were the judges thinking?’. We would also question the wisdom of the School Library Association for thinking that it might be appropriate. This is an adult book that even adults would find offensive. What other books does the Association think appropriate but parents wouldn’t?” says Mr McCoskrie.

“It appears that the author and also the judges are out to pollute the moral innocence of kids.”

Family First is calling on New Zealand Post to withdraw the award, and to avoid association with the Awards until the judges show better judgement.

END

Family First website

www.familyfirst.org.nz

Also see: Into the River wins top prize at NZ Post book awards

Published: 8:36PM Monday June 24, 2013 Source: ONE News

http://tvnz.co.nz/entertainment-news/into-river-wins-top-prize-nz-post-book-awards-5475178

Book prize lets down the young – Opinion (Herald on Sunday)

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Children are exposed to a great deal of explicit sexual material these days. As they come through puberty and beyond, they are liable to come across so much of it on the internet that those who would like to bring a better influence to bear might despair.

They should not give up. There are more weapons in the fight than heavy-handed bans and censorship that never worked, even before pornography was as pervasive as it is now. The best weapon is a book.

Good, well-written stories that go to the heart of a reader and touch the truth of any human experience, including sex, can help a young mind rise above smut. That is why it is a worry when a national award for children’s books is given to a novel that needs to carry a warning.

Some booksellers, we report today, are refusing to display Into the River by Ted Dawe, which took top prize in the recent New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. One explained that it was “unnecessarily graphic” and contained themes the bookseller considered inappropriate for young teenagers.

It contains obscenities and shock references that worthwhile literature does not need. We can only wonder what the judges were thinking, or how much worse the other entries could have been.

Nobody has to wonder at the embarrassment of the award organisers. Last week they sent out parental warning stickers to shops stocking the book, advising them to put it on its covers. The 2013 Kiwi Kids Good Book Guide lists it for children aged 13 and over but one national booksellers’ chain has told all its managers to mark it for over-15s.

Schools, though, seem to think it fine. The School Library Association welcomes the book as a reflection of our society, evidently because its central character is a young male Maori. “There is so little out there with this type of protagonist,” says the president, Fiona Mackie. “When you as library staff see that sort of book, you grab it.”

It is often remarked that New Zealand fiction written for film and television is oddly and uncharacteristically dark. There is not much that is bright, stylish or subtle in its treatment of most subjects, especially sex.

That is probably a reflection of the immaturity and limitations of screen writers in a small nation’s talent pool, but our literature has been better than that. And our writing for children has been exceptionally good. Novelists should not let the crude depictions of New Zealand on air wash back into its literature, particularly when writing for the young.

Teachers and school librarians do teenagers a disservice when they point them towards books that need to shock to capture their interest. Teenagers are not shocked by the subject matter, of course. They can see worse without going to much trouble.

What might shock them is that teachers and librarians have put this stuff in front of them. Teenagers would never say so, but they do not want this sort of fare from their school any more than they would want it from their parents.

It is not prudish or patronising to maintain a certain standard, it is re-assuring them that quality exists and people they respect can recognise it. For many, their early teenage years might be the last in their lives when they read literature worthy of the name.

Reading it might not be easy but it can reward the effort with pleasure far exceeding anything that needs an age warning. The only warning that Dawe’s material really needs is that reading it almost certainly will be a waste of time.

Source: – Herald on Sunday

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10893783

Also see:

Winners announced for New Zealand Post Children’s Book Award

Tuesday, 25 June 2013, 9:39 am

Press Release: NZ Post Children’s Book Awards

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1306/S00341/winners-announced-for-new-zealand-post-childrens-book-award.htm

Into the River named top read at awards. 24 June 2013.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/culture/8837884/Into-the-River-named-top-read-at-awards