She was so angry that I was quite surprised. She was insulted that someone would suggest that as a single mother her child was being properly looked after. Basically what is being said is that women can't be trusted to make decisions on their own about what is good for them when it comes to children. While in some ways I think it is a worthwhile debate to have - like a lot of other issues I worry about who ends up paying the cost for that public debate. It isn't really the politicians who will be affected by it but women and children who didn't ask for their private lives to be made so public.
Politicians create their meaning through division.
Howard is a master of it. By demonising lesbian mothers, Howard has created another outcast group as a vehicle for building his group's identity. He'll do it again before the next election with some other group. And those small l liberals will keep quiet as they did during Wik and have subsequently on mandatory sentencing - moral cowards the lot of them. They wait for Costello, but he won't save them.