Australia: Homosexual marriage voting will unleash gay bigotry?
The plebiscite, after all, is wildly popular — polls show 70 per cent of Australians want to have their say on whether to fundamentally change marriage.
The popularity of the plebiscite transcends party allegiances. It’s the one issue about which most Australians agree.
And yet, on the eve of the election, Shorten committed his party to kill it off. Go figure. He claims the plebiscite will “give the green light to homophobia and ugly hateful attitudes”. This is a profoundly illiberal view. And an insult to the good humour and decency of Australians. Shorten misunderstands democracy if he thinks its aim is to avoid robust disagreement.
After all, what have we been doing the past eight weeks?
He claims Australian is rived by “systemic racism”, yet he supports a referendum on the constitutional recognition of Aborigines, and even a treaty. But surely he shouldn’t support the referendum for fear of unleashing racism and “ugly hateful attitudes”.
In any case, the hateful bigotry unleashed in the marriage debate has come from same-sex marriage advocates who intimidate and malign Christians and other defenders of traditional marriage as pariahs, aggressively shutting down their forums and waging guerrilla warfare on free speech.
When Treasurer Scott Morrison, a committed Christian, spoke last week of the “dreadful hate speech and bigotry” inflicted on the opponents of homosexual marriage, he was howled down.
Not only does such vicious bigotry exist but it is ignored and excused by the media, which has, almost uniformly, become a cheerleader for change.
By opposing the popular plebiscite, same-sex marriage activists are willing to sacrifice their entire project just to make sure the people don’t have a say. What are they frightened of?
It’s not really “hateful attitudes”. What they fear is that, in the privacy of the polling booth, Australians will decide against redefining the foundational institution of civil society.
Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. There are valid arguments on both sides. Such exercises in direct democracy can be uplifting and unifying, as the architect of Ireland’s successful same-sex marriage referendum attests.
Tiernan Brady, in Australia to advise the Marriage Equality campaign, said his country’s referendum “brought people together instead of tearing them apart”.
If you are against the same-sex marriage plebiscite you are against democracy.
