J Marc Schmidt
By now you should have your postal survey form about same-sex marriage, or will receive it soon. If you’re passionate about this issue one way or the other, like our Prime Minister, then you’ll have already decided whether to vote yes or no, and this article is not for you. This article is not about Christianity versus its opponents, either. Non-Christians are not going to be convinced by a religious argument, and Christians have already made up their minds. This article is for everyone else.
‘No’ is the way to go. Here are four reasons why.
1. The ‘Yes’ side has a lot of bad stuff around it, of which we should be suspicious
Think of the Cooper’s Beer controversy, the ACL van attack and cover-up, Bishop Porteous in Tasmania, or Bill Shorten’s threat of suicides to prevent the plebiscite, to name a few. Or, how about all these people in America who go around looking for a Christian bakery to shame for not wanting to cater to a gay wedding, so they can show off for their ‘tribe’; aka virtue signalling.
I wrote an article to reproach Peter FitzSimons for rudeness to Margaret Court, to call him out for his hypocrisy, and to criticise the Left’s values. But all Mrs. Court did was exactly what any traditional person would have done, for example an Aborigine (I used the example of Bill Neidjie*). She just stuck to the values that she has always had. In the same article, FitzSimons then cheaply supported another more well-known Aborigine in order to virtue signal to his ‘tribe’ that he values Aborigines. That is a perfect example of what the Left considers to be ‘virtuous’ behaviour, I suppose.
I wrote to FitzSimons care of the Sydney Morning Herald in order to elicit his response to the article. Here is his reply:
Got your letter.
All good!
I gather you truly believe that the woman made out of a rib shouldn’t have taken the bad apple from the talking snake in the magic tree, yes?
How on EARTH did you reach such absurd conclusions?
Cheers
Peter
Mockery, passive-aggressive ‘friendliness’, and total dismissal of anything I had to say. He did not address any of my arguments. And FitzSimons is not some silly over-passionate university youth. He is an older man, an author of non-fiction books. In other words, he is someone who must research topics carefully and who ought, thanks to his age, to be a little more phlegmatic in his language. But that is the Left. Gleeful mockery instead of reasonable discussion, and virtue signalling instead of actual virtue.**
Bill Shorten’s outrageous threat of suicides to deny us the plebiscite is the same kind of thinking. Let there be no mistake: it was a clear threat of violent consequences in order to stop a democratic vote. The Cooper’s Beer controversy, in which the company was bullied into supporting same-sex marriage by social media activists, was the same again.
But it’s always like that for the Left. They are not going to change. Vote ‘Yes’ for same-sex marriage, and you are voting for more of that way of thinking. A ‘No’ vote will put the brakes on it. ‘No’ is a wiser choice.
2. Nothing will change for gay couples if a ‘No’ vote comes back
Now, a lot of same-sex marriage activists say that nothing will change for straight couples if a ‘Yes’ vote comes back. Which is untrue. Any Christian wanting to say that marriage is between a man and a woman faces reproach, either legal or otherwise. They already do, and we don’t even have same-sex marriage. The case of Bishop Porteous in Tasmania is a perfect example of that. He was threatened with legal action for publicising the Catholic Church’s view on marriage. The sacking of Bernard Gaynor from the Army is another example.
But let’s turn this around. What will happen if a ‘No’ vote comes back in this postal survey? Well, for the average gay couple, nothing. Life will go on as usual. They will have just as many rights as they do now. They will still be widely loved by the media. It’s 2017, after all.
The only thing that certainly will happen is endless months of whining and tantrums from the Left, as we’ve seen in the USA since Trump got elected. And then Bill Shorten will probably bring it in anyway when Labor eventually gets back in government. He is an obvious panderer. He would be called on it if our media was not so friendly to the Left. But I digress.
Nothing will happen to the average gay couple if a ‘No vote comes back. But if a ‘Yes’ vote comes back, it will soon be easier for gay couples to get children from a sperm donor or surrogate mother, who will then be denied a part of the child’s life. The gay couples will come up with fictions like calling one of the male partners the ‘mother’, or the surrogate mother ‘aunty’. Which seems like a raw deal for the kid to say the least. You only get one Mum and one Dad. Pretty unfair not to be raised by one or the other because they died or absconded. How much worse for it to happen just because a couple of gay guys chose to be ‘equal’ to heterosexual couples?
Vote ‘No’ to put the brakes on all that stuff.
3. The Left is being dishonest about its aims
Anyone can see that a homosexual partnership is not the same as a man-woman partnership, so all the whining about ‘equality’ is emotive falseness. But let’s talk marriage for a minute. That is what the postal survey is about, after all. What does marriage look like in Australia in 2017?
Well, far too many marriages end in divorce. Divorce is much easier and more socially acceptable than it was in the past. More marriages start as de facto relationships, and more of them stay that way too. Adultery website Ashley Madison is advertised on TV, and when hackers doxx its users, we are told not that adultery is wrong and that Ashley Madison is a disgrace to human dignity, but that we should guard our online data better — in other words, tacit approval of adultery!
Meanwhile, married men are wary of losing their homes and families to a vindictive ex-wife because they think the Courts favour women. On the other side, there is supposedly an epidemic of domestic violence going on. Men supposedly have too much toxic masculinity and should be more like women. Abortion is easily accessible in most parts of Australia, very common, and becoming even easier to access. This means sex is becoming more frivolous and cold-hearted, and less about family, life, love and commitment. Porn threatens marriage, and has never been cheaper or more plentiful. And then there is ‘Married at First Sight’ on TV, or similar programmes such as ‘The Bachelor’, which cheapen marriage and relationships just for ratings. Karl Marx and Miles Franklin both thought marriage was a kind of oppression, and modern feminists don’t have a much different opinion of it. And actual dads, those guys for whom familial love means sacrifice and decades of hard work, have been mocked for decades now on TV.
Marriage really is a lot less grave a matter than it was. It seems to be about the personal happiness of the person getting married, rather than about a commitment to anything bigger, like family or the country. If you don’t like it these days, just get out. Christians and other religions still value marriage, but in secular Australia, it’s hard not to conclude that marriage is in decline.
And it’s this declining institution that gay guys and lesbians suddenly tell us they are being excluded from? That they are being ‘oppressed’ in some way? Please. They don’t need it. Kids need it man-woman marriage, and the country does, but not gay couples. What, are they going to ‘save themselves for marriage’?
The object of same-sex marriage is not equality. The object is to devalue real marriage even more than it already has been. To make the decline even steeper.
If the Left really wanted equality, why not just call for it to be abolished all together, and let the State treat all co-habitation relationships equally? Why not? What, is a long-term de facto relationship inferior to a couple of gay guys who have a piece of paper saying they are ‘married’? Well, it is? And is a gay couple suddenly superior to a polygamous Aboriginal relationship, just because it has only two members? Why?
So I don’t think it’s about ‘equality’. It’s about changing what people think marriage is even more.
Real marriage is good, when it’s done right. It produces well-loved, well-balanced kids in stable homes. Yes, it does fail far too often. Our own society’s increasing lack of value for marriage is not helping. But does that mean we should devalue it more? Why shouldn’t we have high standards, and try to reach them? Why shouldn’t we be circumspect about choosing a marriage partner, and then be expected to uphold our commitment? Wise choices and keeping promises are not bad things.
A ‘No’ vote is a vote of confidence in real marriage, in this age when marriage is more and more being seen as irrelevant.
4. A ‘No’ vote will be a clear rebuke to Malcolm Turnbull and the Government
Maybe you don’t give a stuff about any of this, and just wish people would stop talking about it. OK. I understand completely.
But maybe you are sick of politicians. Maybe you want honest people who speak plainly and who want to do their best for their country, not shifty panderers who are only concerned about their careers. Maybe you like the idea that there is a lawn on top of Parliament House to symbolise how Parliament is below us and serves us, but wish politicians would start acting like it.
If a ‘No’ vote comes back, there will be a lot of pressure for Malcolm Turnbull to resign, just as British PM David Cameron did after the Brexit vote. Turnbull may not resign, but he will have to start answering questions about why he keeps backing causes that the Australian people don’t support, and his constant waffling. And not just him, but the Government and the Opposition. A ‘No’ vote can’t just be ignored.
A ‘Yes’ on the other hand is an invitation for Turnbull and all the other politicians to keep doing what they are doing.
This is your chance to put the clamps on our entitled political class. If anyone is in dire need of a smacked bottom, it’s them. You are not going to get this chance again. We didn’t get the plebiscite, and we nearly didn’t get this postal survey, either. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Vote ‘No’ because it’ll send a clear message to our political leaders.
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Endnotes:
* Here is Bill Neidjie’s poem Law from the book Gagudju Man, which explains his attitude to traditional law, while also criticising white European law, in other words subjectivism. I sent the poem to Peter FitzSimons. He did not comment. (I dare say the only Aborigines that the Left would ever say anything against are the ones who signed the Uluru Bark Petition):
Law never change….
always stay the same
Maybe it hard,
but proper one for all people.
Not like white European law…
always changing.
If you don’t like it,
you can change.
Aboriginal law never change.
Old people tell us,
‘You got to keep it.’
It always stays.
** Here’s what C.S. Lewis has to say about virtue. Yes, he was a big Christian, but you don’t have to be a Christian to say that this is right. It’s from the end of his 1943 essay The Poison of Subjectivism, published in the 1967 book Christian Reflections. We can easily apply Lewis’s words to our own leaders right now. FitzSimons, in one of his e-mails to me, implied that Lewis, a Christian, was therefore a ‘nutter’. What do you think?
While we believe that good is something to be invented, we demand of our rulers such qualities as ‘vision’, ‘dynamism’, ‘creativity’ and the like. If we returned to the objective view we should demand qualities much rarer, and much more beneficial — virtue, knowledge, diligence and skill. ‘Vision’ is for sale, or claims to be for sale, everywhere. But give me a man who will do a day’s work for a day’s pay, who will refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts, and who has learned his job.