Sign In
0 Items (
Search
Comments (20)
Listening to ABC radio the other day, I learned that, according to a recent poll, ‘resolving the same-sex marriage issue’ ranks second as a concern for voters, along with border security and behind fixing the debt and deficit.
At first glance one might take this finding, as will every dutiful social engineer on the Left, to mean that legislating for same-sex marriage is imperative. Well, that is one way of looking at things. But to my mind, what might easily be argued is that many wish the issue would simply go away, one way or the other, because it is distracting our ‘leaders’ from what really matters: the economy and border security.
To be honest, that’s just semantics on my part. When I put on my realist’s hat I know that the clamour and whining of the gay lobby won’t end until the LBGTI crowd gets what it wants. Back in 2010, Labor’s official policy was to support the traditional definition of marriage. In fact, Labor’s most prominent gay MP, Penny Wong, supported that very policy, saying at the time that there was a “cultural, religious and historical view of marriage being between a man and a woman” and, further, that this traditional definition of the term was worth preserving.
Let’s take Wong at her word, accept that she genuinely held that belief in 2010. If so, we can only conclude that, at some point in the past six years, she has come to accept that times have changed, her former view was wrong, and she is now eager to see implemented that which she formerly opposed. And here is the rub: in her newly acquired and ardent support of the rainbow crowd’s marriage agenda, she endorses the view of its loud and more emotional advocates that anyone who opposes same-sex marriage must be, by definition, a hateful and homophobic bigot.
When Wong examines her conscience — allowing that such periods of quiet reflection punctuate her busy schedule of ABC appearances — does it occur to her that she is herself the very model of subjectivism and intolerance. After all, just six yeas ago she opposed gay marriage. Now, having followed her own road to Damascus, she denies others the indulgence of the time in which to mull the issues and change their minds. There is one rule for Ms Wong, apparently, and quite another for everyone else.
Now let’s assume the more likely interpretation: Wong did not really believe her own words and was merely playing the political game when she was prepared to sacrifice same-sex marriage on the altar of her career. In this case, isn’t it hypocrisy on steroids for Wong to expect others, by which I mean those whose opposition to same-sex marriage is based on firm religious or secular conviction (for example, Tony Abbott and Cory Bernardi) to abandon their beliefs just because it now suits Wong’s political and personal convenience to belatedly acknowledge her own?
We’re told that we now can’t have a plebiscite on same-sex marriage because it will unleash a wave of hatred and vilification for and against gay people and leave them terribly scarred, perhaps even cause some of them to take their own lives. Opponents of the plebiscite point to the Irish referendum in 2015 as the purported proof of this. But why would all those hate-spewing homophobes be holding fire until a plebiscite is called? The debate has been ongoing for years. Where is the hate speech? If Parliament votes for same-sex marriage without first taking account of a plebiscite, do SSM proponents expect these apocryphal homophobes, denied what they were promised at the election, to just shrug and fade away. Scotching a popular vote can only inflame the very ‘bigotry’ advocates claim to fear.
Let’s have a look at the Irish referendum. It now seems an article of faith among the more incoherent SSM advocates that this was a ‘divisive’ event. Interestingly, right at the moment, we have two of the convenors of the Irish ‘Yes’ campaign in Australia. Here is Tiernan Brady, political director for the Irish Yes campaign, as quoted in The Australian (emphasis added):
“the lead up to the vote was mentally taxing for LGBT people but the vote itself was ultimately a ‘unifying moment for our country‘, and “ugly conversations were not the result of the process itself.”
On the other hand, SMH reported Grainne Healy, co-director of the Yes campaign, as saying,
“Irish volunteers needed counselling after abuse and hate speech from reform opponents”.
If vilification was a significant aspect of the Irish referendum it was not widely reported, if at all, in the media. An extensive Google search fails to find any evidence of this. What mostly appears to be the case is that activists label elements of the ‘No’ case as homophobic. For example, the argument that ‘children do better in a family with a mother and a father’, whatever its merits, is simply dismissed as disguised homophobia that is hurtful or insulting to gay people. That is a great example of having your cake and eating it too. Reduced to its basic and absurd level, the logic boils down to this: ‘We can’t allow a meaningful debate about same-sex marriage because all your arguments are hurtful’. Here we have the 18C mindset writ large and ugly.
Even if the debate in Ireland was divisive, why would that necessarily translate to Australia? Ireland has a completely different social, religious and demographic tradition.
One of the real motivations behind opposition to a plebiscite is that gay activists see same-sex marriage as a ‘right’, not to be bestowed by the people but acknowledged by government. They resent going cap in hand to the great unwashed.
But same-sex marriage is not a ‘right’. It is a bid to re-define a concept understood by society for millennia as being the contract between a man and a woman, and only a man and a woman. An admittedly crude analogy is that marriage is a club to which gays are seeking membership. It is up to the members of that club whether or not to accept them. Judging by the polling, in all likelihood they will.
If same-sex marriage is simply a push for ‘equality’ and not part of a wider ideological campaign, and if its advocates want the issue resolved ASAP, then they should get behind the plebiscite to demand not merely the rubber stamp of parliamentary endorsement but the endorsement of their fellow citizens.
Penny Wong changed her mind. How she dare she assert that lesser humans are incapable of the same transition.
Everything is divisive. So what.
The debate should be “is homosexuality normal?” The very base of the whole quagmire.
Hear, hear!
My grandmother was an arch conservative (God bless her now decomposed cotton socks) and she and my father, her son-in-law (God bless his now decomposed cotton socks) used to have truly monumental political rows. Politics held an important place in our household.
Now, grandma, an ex teacher who loved history, used to regale we grandchildren with countless stories about historical figures, like King Bruce of Scotland, who was said to be hiding in some highland cave, watching a spider trying again and again to form his web, this continuing for quite some period of time, until eventually the thread attached and the web was formed. Brucy had one of those eureka moments.
The thing is, apart from telling us stories of courage and fortitude and things like that, she also liked to tell us about the decline of the Roman Empire, of a society imploding and the need not to go down the same track. I have since learned that things like taxation came into the equation; and no longer wanting to do their equivalent of National Service, paying lesser beings to do so; but an empire weakened by an overall divisiveness, and a society that had lost all sense of social cohesion and equity. So the Huns and the Goths, the Visigoths and the Vandals were able to dismantle the greatest empire on earth, because of internal divisiveness. I have a strong feeling those flabby Roman senators, rushing hither and thither as the barbarians sought to remove their heads, would not have been shouting out ‘divisiveness, so what’.
For me, Cory’s ‘slippery slope’ theory seems more than apt here. Those who wish to dismantle Western Civilisation are not going to stop at SSM, I have a feeling they’d like to do away with all moral taboos: I mean why have any taboos at all? It’s all relative (yes, but to what? I say).
Of course if Ms Wong finds Australians to be homophobic hate speech bigots she is always free to go and live in Malaysia or Saudi Arabia. No? What would be the problem in those obviously enlightened societies? After all we never hear of Ms Wong and her ilk (Fairfax, Their ALPBC and The Graudina damning the murder of homosexuals in rabid muslimic societies such as Iran and by ISIS/ISIL do we? As for the keeping of sex slaves, the second class chattel status of women, murders carried out by the allah akbar action “men” crowd and just out-and-out ethnic cleansing by enlightened muslims, Ms Wong seems quite silent. They must not be hate speech bigots.
All those people and organizations you mention; they’re just not very bright. Intelligent people just don’t go on like this. Those who THINK they’re intelligent behave this way but really intelligent, prescient, experience and enlightening people don’t behave like serial fools. That’s just how it is. These craven individuals you describe fool nobody – they try to pretend they are intelligent and insightful but I’d mortgage my house that my 7 year old grandson would have more sense than any of them.
I remember when he was 4 and we minded his chicken – it had a broken leg and hopped. He loved that chicken but when we saw him carrying it around we laughed. He looked at me one day and said, “what’s so funny”? Even then he had more sense than Penny Wong, who has NO sense of humour.
I suspect you may have missed the point, Jody.
In politics, and power manipulations in general, intellectual honesty is a genuine handicap. What is required is a depth of hypocrisy that is abyssal, an impenetrable vanity and an unshakeable attachment to Noble Cause Corruption.
Those without these attributes fall by the wayside.
I leave it to others to decide whether I’ve ‘missed the point’.
For a surprisingly frank view of homosexuality by a prominent gay personality, check out this link.
https://youtu.be/symNG931L68
Milo is a total hero!!
That Yiannopoulos fella has a lot of interesting things to say.
It’s another battle in the escalating culture war. They smell blood, they have the tools to mass manipulate and are winning. I’m convinced that > 50% of the population are indeed more concerned about this issue than the borders, immigration, the economy, the future. Feelings trump facts and logic.
Besides, there’s nothing of value to conserve in Western civilisation anyway.
Thanks Marxists.
I believe it is all evidence of decadence. Moral decline and the society’s willingness to either accept or turn a blind eye to it will leave a vacuum for the kind of institutionalized religion which can only gather momentum, such as Islam. It was Dostoyevski who said, “When God is dead everything is possible”. I think what we’re witnessing now through the culture wars is living proof that Dostoyevski was right. And decadence is the metastasizing malignancy which will rob our society of integrity, respect and order. The fools who don’t recognize this are one and the same people I’ve alluded to in an earlier (out of touch!) comment.
I couldn’t agree more, Jody. The western world, particularly the Anglosphere has become so demoralised since World War II, that I doubt there is any way back. Sodom and Gomorrha have nothing on our modern society, and I suspect it will take a similar “Act of God” to clean up the current mess.
In a godless universe, asked Fyodor Dostoyevsky ,where would morality come from?
I am confused when I read of Wong and Weatherill and now Wongs homosexuality, talk of both ways, who is confused?
Remember this: two Wongs don’t make a white.
Get focussed!
The SSM/LGTB/ABC ‘thing’ is a boutique issue for dilettantes.
That wise, fighting social commentator of the 1960s, Frank Knopfelmacher, said that Catholic and social conservatives could easily be bought-off by the Liberals, ‘all the Liberals have to do is ban the novel Portnoy’s Complaint, and they (the Liberals), will not have to build a new aircraft carrier!’. SSM is a distraction. Conservatives are losers today because they have no economic program, are lazy free-marketeers and have been subverted by a Trojan Horse – Austrian libertines and anarchists.
Well Peter, I’m sure you’re right about Wong. But do you think she cares? Butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth, as my mother used to say.
In my view homosexuality is morally wrong. I do not accept the idea that there are things consenting adults can do in private in which the rest of society has no legitimate interest.
The advocates of social change always like to equate change with enlightenment and progress. One can critique that. But the claim of moral superiority is more difficult to deal with.
Some people think that if they cannot see anything wrong with something, that must mean it is morally perfectly OK.I recall Peter Singer on Q&A whose response to the idea that bestiality might be wrong was “I cannot see anything wrong with it”.
It is fairly easy to think of examples of people who have been sadly mistaken in their moral judgements. However how does one persuade an opponent? What would convince Penny Wong that her lifestyle was immoral?
I think there is a danger in the illusion that moral disagreements can be settled by debate. Morality is not entirely amenable to reason, and neither are people. In Victorian times moral standing was held to be a function of character i.e. what the Bible calls “training in righteousness”. To me that’s the answer. But of course to be properly trained you need the right trainer….
(Austrian? Leave that wonderful country out of it, please!!)
I love your “boutique issue for dilettantes”. Sure have nailed it there. Ultimately, it’s all about control. I remember, some years ago, having a discussion with a person involved as a psychologist on the IVF program. It went something like this: “when conception fails those who are able to bend with the breeze are able to deal with it; those who think they can control everything snap like a twig and cannot handle their fate”.