The same-sex marriage post that Facebook deleted
When I argued that the language used by same-sex marriage advocates risked doing the real harm to LGBTI youths, Facebook removed my post. It took the intervention of former Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson to get it restored, writes John Dickson. Perhaps the most powerful argument for same-sex marriage and against holding a plebiscite on the issue is the potential harm that is being done to vulnerable LGBTI youth. But the argument itself is far from self-evident, and there are reasons to suspect that both sides of the debate share equal responsibility for protecting gay and lesbian youth from feeling they are a despised minority. The statistics are solid and alarming. A systematic review of research in the scientific journal BMC Psychiatry found that lesbian, gay and bisexual people "are at higher risk of mental disorder, suicidal ideation, substance misuse, and deliberate self harm than heterosexual people." Suicide attem...