Changing your mind

World Champion Axeman David Foster supports gay marriage

This report from Melbourne's The Age is an interesting and heart-warming example of how opinions can change.

World champion axeman David Foster may not be a likely poster boy for gay rights.
However, these days the prominent North-West Tasmanian is just as happy to be championing same-sex marriage as he is woodchopping.

The reason? His daughter Sally, her partner Lily and their daughter Wren, who soon turns one.

The Examiner reports that Foster will speak on Tuesday in support of same-sex marriage at a forum in Hobart - something he admits would not have happened before Sally sat down with him and his wife Jan four years ago.

"I think she (Sally) didn't want to (come out) earlier, because I was a bit anti-that and maybe she didn't want to upset me," he said.

"She sat my wife and I down and said `I want to tell you something' and that's how we spoke as a family."

The 54-year-old Latrobe resident said his close relationship with Sally had not changed as a result of that conversation, but his views had.

"Everyone has an opinion, but once it's close to home you realise what's important. My daughter is the same daughter I reared and just because her sexual preferences are different from mine doesn't mean a thing," he said.

"She is a nurse, she has a beautiful partner and a child and if they wish to get married, I can't see why they can't."

Read the whole report here.   The comments are most illuminating.  One of the reasons it's so interesting is that Tasmania was the last state in Australia to repeal the laws against homosexuality.

There's hope that even the troglodytes will change.  Everybody -- everybody -- has a gay cousin or brother or sister or uncle or aunt or friend.  Everybody.