The story of Tony Abbott and his lesbian sister, Christine Forster, is much more about the political than the personal.
To recap: as Abbott’s resistance to marriage equality hit the headlines earlier this year, rumours spread that he had a close gay relative.
The news went unreported until The Australian splashed it across the front page of itsweekend edition and its Saturday magazine on April 7.
But this was a coming out with a twist.
Forster’s contribution amounts to a paragraph confirming both that she is in a same-sex relationship and that she is an intensely private person (the story was illustrated by some photos of her at a party with her partner, Virginia Edwards, attributed by The Australian to “an online photo gallery”).
Other than that, the story is entirely about Tony Abbott – how much “empathy” he has shown his sister, how much “integrity” he has for not changing his stance against marriage equality.
Clearly, this story was never meant to be about Christine Forster and her views on marriage equality.
Rodney Croome is the campaign director of Australian Marriage Equality.