Oppose Homosexual marriage you get silenced, sacked, fined and jailed
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| Rainbow flag. Symbol of gay pride. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
We need more of that – a version for mature, hopeful, civilised grown-ups.
The current debate over same-sex marriage is one-sided, volatile, even violent.
In the movement to open up and move forward, the side that supports the prevailing laws and conventions is increasingly silenced. And it is not only same-sex marriage that features this concerning trend. In the explosive social media spaces particularly, there are now some views you are seemingly not allowed to express – and by doing so are called a bigot. Oh, the irony.
You can’t support cracking down on illegal migration, or even express concerns about radical minority religious elements or minority groups when they are revealed to commit a disproportionate amount of a particular kind of crime, even though you are allowed the virtual elbow room to spout off about criminals from the mainstream without the same very public censure.
In Australia, social pressure is stifling free speech – the left is very vocal and crushes any chance of a dissenting, considered view.
People are entitled to recalcitrant opinions, even if we do not agree with them.
And the gay marriage debate in public forums is in no way balanced – as seen in the abandonment of ads calling for a mature discussion about the likely outcomes of gay marriage by commercial networks and the ferocious put-down of traditional marriage proponent Katy Faust on Monday night’s Q&A program. Considered, conservative, old-fashioned views might be unpopular in the madding crowd, but they are still valid. In a free country, they deserve to be heard.
As it stands, those who dare speak in support of the current marriage laws are shouted down before they are fully expressed.
Worse, intolerance rains down on those who express those views in ways unprecedented. They are threatened, vilified, verbally roughed up.
Isn’t that shades of the very community intolerance that those who support same-sex marriage and racial and religious integration are fighting to dissolve? The social pressure is stifling. And it is often liberal opinion that is loudest and most raucous.
An example from the United States, to which we are wedded culturally for better or worse, illustrates the pickle we have got ourselves into: an appeals court this week ordered that a Colorado baker’s religious beliefs were not an acceptable reason for him to refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay couple’s nuptials.
This was despite baker Jack Phillips giving evidence that he was not engaging in sexual-orientation discrimination because he was happy to serve gay customers and make them all manner of sweet treats – just not wedding cakes, because his religious convictions meant he believed marriage itself should be between a man and a woman.
Interestingly, in delivering its findings, the Colorado court noted it had been OK for three other bakeries to refuse to make cakes with religious scriptures on them that they found offensive because it was the meaning of the words, not the religion per se, that they objected to.
To be clear: I support the legal right for same-sex couples to wed if they wish. It removes outdated divisions, it is right and it is time.
And I have fears about the rise in our country of the radical element of Islam, a religion that is cut from a very different cloth than that of our bedrock Judaeo-Christian laws.
But I also believe that for us to truly progress, we must be able to have respectful, informed, civilised debate. And for that to occur, we must accept that there are different, heartfelt views and that mature discussion does not mean grinding someone down or forcing them into fearful silence if they do not concur with you.
We need a modicum of kindness and respect for considered, yet opposing, views so that we have debate over issues as important as gay marriage instead of just a steamroller for change.
A hundred years ago, English biographer Beatrice Hall summarised French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire’s notion: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
In matters of massive social and legal change, we would do well to follow that lead. There is room for a diversity of voices in working out who we are and who we really want to be.
