Australia: Homosexual marriage voting will unleash gay bigotry?
Australia: Labor leader Bill Shorten’s sudden antipathy to the marriage plebiscite can only be seen as an early admission that he had no hope of winning government and had decided to drag the Labor Party into a politically correct dead-end. 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 ...