Why ddid a government funded TV station: SBS ban marriage advertisement during Homosexual mardi gras?
A lot has happened since our letter to you on Saturday 7 March, as the first television ad in our marriage campaign, ‘Think of the Child’, was broadcast in Sydney as the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade got underway.
Since then our ad, “What about Equality for the Child?” has been seen over half a million times on YouTube - http://youtu.be/s80wL5al5NA. It was the #1 video on YouTube in Australia for most of last week.
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| Mess after Mardi Gras, Sidney, Australia (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
With the Senate set to debate Senator Leyonhjelm’s Right to Marry Bill next Thursday, AMF must keep putting out there the child-centred case against gay ‘marriage’ and gay adoption / surrogacy.
ENGAGE THE DEBATE
The Mardi Gras Parade, that decadent political protest march with its “marriage equality” float, was certainly the right time to place our gentle counter-protest. That decision, and the subsequent decision by SBS to ban our ad, has stimulated debate in a big way. Our ad has posed the question, “What about equality for kids?” to at least two million viewers and listeners on numerous radio stations, TV current affairs and media websites here and overseas, and for the first time in many years the homosexual lobby has been on the back foot, having to defend a change to the marriage law that “forces a child to miss out on a mother or a father”.
Here is a sample of media coverage since the Mardi Gras:
Article by AMF President
Interviews:
Australian print and online:
Andrew Bolt: SBS takes a controversial stance on family values
Overseas coverage:
ONE CLEAR ARGUMENT
Our Board also specified the message we intended to put out with this ad, and subsequent ads:
We are proclaiming the core argument against same-sex marriage: that it forces a child to miss out on a mother or a father. We make it an issue of justice. We aim to give politicians and the public one solid argument to stand on:
o “I do think a child should have, where possible, both a mother and a father – and same-sex marriage means a child cannot have both a mother and a father. That is why I cannot support the institution of same-sex marriage”.
The same principle must apply to same-sex adoption and surrogacy – as well as surrogacy for single people - since that also deprives a child of their birthright, wherever possible, to a mother and a father.
As you see, we have successfully injected that argument into the public consciousness, at least to some extent, with our first ad. Because of your support, there are now many more people thinking of the same-sex “marriage” question from the perspective of the rights of the child, not just the demands of adults.
TRYING TO SILENCE OUR VOICE
As you will recall from the launch letter, and as you can see from the media links above, we have also been the object of censorship, with the taxpayer-funded broadcaster SBS refusing at the last minute to play the ad, which had been booked and approved weeks earlier.
Many people who do not agree with us on marriage being ‘a man-woman thing’ do agree that this censorship by SBS was wrong. For example, see HERE the article by Tim Wilson, a Human Rights Commissioner who is openly gay but defends free speech for those he disagrees with.
There are other ways in which people are trying to silence our voice.
- My personal Facebook page, full of family videos and memories, was removed without explanation on Tuesday, after I posted our ad.
- There is a petition at change.org to have our ad removed from You Tube. So much for free speech and the right of all citizens to argue their case on matters of public importance!
- There is another petition at sumofus.org trying to make Channel 7 and 9 apologise for broadcasting our ad, and to play a pro-same sex marriage ad as restitution! Remember, our ad was formally approved by the regulator, CAD, and commercial channels do not ‘vet’ what CAD has approved.
Likewise, journalists have felt free to slander AMF and me personally, to try and exclude us from the debate. That is not surprising, and will not deter us, because we are defending something akin to ‘sacred ground’ – the life between mother, father and child. In the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 16), the family is “the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state”. Protection. We are reminding society and the state of their duty.
RESPONDING TO CRITICISM
Single parents: There has been some sincere criticism from single parents who think we are commenting on the job they are doing. That is not the case. Clearly our ad says “the equal right, wherever possible, to both a mum and a dad”. We know it is not always possible for kids to have both a mum and a dad - maybe the parents separate or a parent might have died - and many single parents I know do a remarkable job. But no single mother I’ve ever met wanted their child to miss out on a father; it just happened through unfortunate circumstance. What we say is that no government should pass laws that make a child miss out. Laws for same-sex marriage would inflict the loss of a father or a mother on any child created within such a ‘marriage’. Same-sex marriage law is a coldly calculated decision of government to institute motherless families and fatherless children.
Competence of same-sex couples: We have also been told that two men are just as caring and competent as a man and a woman. Fair enough, but neither man can be a mother to a newborn baby. Just take breastfeeding as an example where men are certainly not qualified: this profound mammalian bond matters immensely to a baby’s emotional attachment and stability. Later in life, neither man can guide a growing girl to womanhood the way a mother can. A man is not a woman; we love our mothers in a different way to how we love our fathers, and both are uniquely important and irreplaceable to the child. No same-sex couple can provide a child with both a mum and a dad: that is why they are not qualified to marry, even though they are free to live as they choose, with full “relationship equality” with heterosexual couples in every other way.
Distress to young people: Another criticism has been that by opposing same-sex marriage we are causing offence and distress to young people who are being raised in same-sex households. Nobody wants to cause offense and distress, but there are only two ways for people not to take offense. One is for them to choose not to listen to the discussion. Another is for people on our side of the marriage debate to just stay silent and let the other side be the only voice. That is not an option if there is to be any debate at all on this radical proposal to redefine the foundational institution of society.
