CHAMPION OF FREE SPEECH SEYMOUR WANTS TO SHUT THE BISHOPS UP

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The cheek of it! The cheek of old Nick, without a doubt.

Any David Seymour is too much David Seymour. Already.

Five days ago, Act's one-pony circus performer David Seymour was once again posturing as NZ's champion of free speech at Massey University Palmerston North. 

But - how come? - one day ago he was climbing into the NZ Conference of Bishops for advising Catholics against voting for euthanasia - for Seymour's tragically deformed baby, his End of Life Choice referendum. 

Seymour says the religious leaders need to understand the End of Life Choice Act is about choice, dignity and respect. Hah!

They may have a philosophical view that life belongs to God," Seymour says sententiously, "and they have a right to their belief. They don't have the right to force it on others," he said in a statement.

I beg your pardon, Mr Seymour? 

The bishops were stating a fact of their Catholic Faith, reminding Catholics of a belief they hold in common with those people - a belief so deeply and fundamentally held by Catholics that they shouldn't need reminding. (But if some Mass-going 'Catholics' believe they can vote for Labour, they very much need reminding they can't vote for euthanasia.)

Teaching the truths of the Catholic Faith is the bishops' business, and for once they were minding it. It is not your business, Mr Seymour. Except that you are desperate, as a career politician, for any publicity to keep your seat in Parliament and the handsome salary that goes with it, because apart from policy wonking, what else can you do? 

And five days ago you, Mr Seymour, were telling university students that free speech was a major issue in New Zealand and that you've written a lovely bill that would cut government funding to universities that did not take appropriate steps to protect and foster freedom of speech. You suggest a financial penalty for being anti free speech is probably the only thing that can incentivise them to be pro free speech.

speech.https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300108299/act-leader-david-seymour-talks-freely-about-the-dangers-of-silence

You can't have it both ways, Mr Seymour. If university students have a right to free speech, so do bishops. So does anyone.

In going for the NZ Catholic Bishops you expose yourself as a hypocrite. Of course the bishops, reckoned now as next-to-nothing by the body politic, are a soft target which you choose according to Act's much-vaunted 'principles', which are anything but. 

Apparently you believe in free speech only if it agrees with your speech. Double-speech, spoken with a forked tongue. The obvious financial penalty is  confiscation of your parliamentary salary. 

Voters, make it happen!

Come, Holy Spirit, come by the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Thy most beloved Bride, and renew the face of the earth.