So, let’s get this straight, so to speak, right from the start. Until a few days ago, Labor and the Greens, and advocates of same-sex marriage in general, were against a plebiscite on same-sex marriage in Australia, because they thought they would win. Opinion polls, they assured us, showed that 70 percent of Australians support same-sex marriage. The argument followed that because the plebiscite was a foregone conclusion for the affirmative, it would be a waste of money to hold it, and parliament should just vote it through.
But now, Labor and the Greens are planning to block the passage of legislation in the Senate to hold the plebiscite, but on the grounds that they might lose. The non-sequitur is argued that because Prime Minister Turnbull stuffed up the census, he will stuff up the plebiscite. Aside from the fact that an apparent margin of 20% would require a stuff-up of much larger proportions (perhaps the kind that turns a record national surplus into a record national debt) it only “follows” if we expect most voting-age Australians to log on to a website after 7pm on a weekday to participate in the plebiscite.
If Labor and the Greens now try to make both arguments simultaneously, they will be blatantly contradicting themselves. You either want to thwart direct democracy by denying the people the chance to vote on a paradigm-changing decision because you think you’re going to win, or because you think you’re going to lose. Not both. Take note that from now on, if they argue that the debate required to hold the plebiscite would cause needless offence to homosexuals, they are arguing for the former, although they now argue the latter.
The key figure in all of this is the figure of 70%. As I have argued before, those in favour of same-sex marriage assert this figure as though it is 100% representative of the whole of Australia (hold elections by opinion poll, now there is an idea, oh wait, that’s how we change Prime Ministers these days in Australia) and absolutely, set in concrete, unchanging. I suspect that most people, when they hear this figure, reckon it is B.S. And I suspect that Labor and the Greens reckon it is, too.
The reason they formerly argued that we shouldn’t hold the plebiscite because they knew it would succeed, was because they knew they would lose. The reason they now argue that we shouldn’t hold the plebiscite because they are worried it will fail, is because they know they will lose. Labor and the Greens are already formulating their alibi. They are disassociating themselves from the doomed plebiscite before it happens, and they are scapegoating Turnbull before the fact.
Most importantly, they know that if the plebiscite fails, the matter will be buried, so they are putting their chess pieces in place so that they can keep agitating after its failure. This battle in the Culture War, between the forces of Western Civilisation on one side and Cultural Marxism on the other, is far from over.
Photo by cpsucsa 