Change At Any Price - The Election of Donald Trump

Millions of words and libraries of articles have already been written about the 2016 US election where Donald Trump has been stunningly offered the keys to the White House, so I don't intend to trawl through what others have already done in excruciating microscopic detail. I had actually remarked to my husband that I didn't think that I'd bother to write anything about the election given that I could probably offer little in original thought, and also for the fact that I'm Australian, not American. But as the days have gone by, and I keep on reading and I keep on thinking about what has happened, why it has happened, what it means, and what could possibly face us in the years ahead, I began to coalesce a few thoughts that in their own particular combination, do perhaps offer something original. As for not being American, I am reminded of what author J K Rowling tweeted in response to being told, "aren't you British, mind your own business" regarding the election: "When a man this ignorant & easy to manipulate gets within sniffing distance of the nuclear codes, it's everyone's business". 

So here are a few thoughts cobbled together after a few short days and that claim no exhaustive or expansive brief.

Everyone knows what kind of a man Donald Trump is. It is hardly even mildly surprising now to hear him described as being a racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, narcissistic, demagogic blowhard who would easily win the gold medal for the least understanding of political and geopolitical drivers in our world today. The disclosures during the campaign of how he customarily treats women have been horrifying and breath-taking. Pigs, slobs, dogs. Predatory sexual behavior too, we saw with our own eyes.  The disclosures during the campaign of how he exploited workers and not paid them properly have been scandalous. The fact that there are still outstanding court cases against him is probably a normal day at the office for Donald Trump. He says he will forbid anybody with Muslim faith from migrating to the US and he will build a wall between America and Mexico. Welcome to the West Bank. Welcome to Stalinist Berlin.

Spoiled, and having grown up in and surrounded by immense wealth, not of his own making, he is famous only for that wealth and for his ego. Famous for nothing virtuous; much like a Kardashian, or a Paris Hilton in the noughties. And even his business interests are hardly glowing. Lots of businesses he’s touched have turned to ash. His reality tv show, The Apprentice, depicts him as the omnipotent boss who can fire anyone and everyone on a mere caprice if the notion so takes him; a tv show designed patently to feed his soaring ego so that he can be watched by millions of people around the world as, Olympian god-like, he, Donald Trump, plays with his people-toys and crushes their hopes when he's finished playing. This is narcissism at its most text-book. This is narcissism beyond healthy confidence and self-assurance and lifted stratospherically into the range of unhealthy and destructive personality disorders.

With his name 'Trump' emblazoned across his private jet, his tower block in New York, his University, and all his other Trump merchandise, his narcissism finally hit the ultimate jackpot in running for the Presidency of the United States. Never would there be a bigger stage for him to flounce his enormous ego. And of course, in the early days of the campaign, when even he probably thought he would be knocked out of the race quickly, the American media gave him gazillions of dollars’ worth of free advertising and publicity, as he only had to sneeze and they followed it in high def cinematic vision, his every inane ignorant fact-free utterance covered in minute detail giving him free kick after free kick. The media failed us all.

So I ask the question? Can we separate the man from the mouth? Or putting it perhaps more carefully, can we separate the character of a candidate from his or her platform? Is it okay to vote for a tyrant if you like what he says? Is it kosher to vote for change when the change will be brought about by a protectionist demagogue or a misogynist sexist or a racist blowhard? I would say "No, it isn't". America just said, "Yes, it is". I think most of the world disagrees.

I don't think you can separate out, like cream from milk, the character and the platform. They go together, for the platform will be informed by the character and the platform will be prosecuted by the character. What does history tell us? Recall those in Weimar Germany who voted for the little WW1 Austrian corporal with the funny Chaplin moustache because he too talked about change; a much desired change, by rejecting the crippling war reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. These same voters might have thought twice had they known what he would do with their vote. Eighty million people would ultimately die as a result of that vote. But how could they know? Well, they did know to a certain extent. They knew his fascist proclivities. They knew of his Brown Shirted thugs who beat up Jewish people or in fact anybody who dared to disagree with them at their meetings. “Nasty business this aggressiveness”, these voters would no doubt have said, while turning the other way not to look. But they knew. And yet they voted him into power regardless. Are they at least in part responsible for what happened next? You bet they are. And a sense of guilt still hangs over the country of Germany to this day, “like a black cloud”, one German friend told me once. And all because the people wanted change and a twisted little demagogue was able to sell them what they wanted to hear.

I have another question that flows from this. Is change always a good thing? For example, what about change that exacts a significant cost? Does the end always justify the means? Is change at any price, even good and desirable change, a good thing when its execution brings suffering and division? I say "No, it isn't". America just said, "Yes, it is". I think most of the world disagrees.

The American election was undoubtedly a race election. We thought it might be a gender election. But in the end, it wasn't. It was all about race, and indirectly, class. We are told that it was anti-establishment. Establishment politics. Establishment economics. Establishment media. It all had to change. The forgotten poor people, note, forgotten poor *white* people, voted for change to send a message that they would be forgotten no more. Well, maybe they did. But they voted for change at any price. They voted for themselves. The so-called forgotten forgot everybody else. They forgot the greater good. They forgot that the road of progress is hard won and can be swept away in an instant of madness. However, this economic story cannot be the full story. Because, the black community, the most down-at-heel and oppressed group in the United States, overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton, even though she was establishment. I think they might have wanted change too. In fact, I know they did. In overwhelming numbers. But they had the good sense not to vote for change at any price. Change at any price is self-defeating. Change at any price is unconscionable.

Recently in Australia, the LGBTI community gathered together in overwhelming numbers to oppose the enabling legislation for a plebiscite that would have the country vote on the issue of marriage equality. The plebiscite was to be a non-binding public opinion poll and was designed by the opponents of marriage equality as a way to stop marriage equality. It was to be essentially, a poll of Australia’s homophobia. With the polls as they are, a plebiscite indeed would have passed the vote test. But in bringing marriage equality about this way, the Government would have unleashed the vile forces of public homophobia against the LGBTI community unchecked; kids included. It had started already, even without the enabling legislation. The lies, the distraction, the attacks. While most LGBTI people want change in the Marriage Act, we do not want change at any price. The arguments against a plebiscite on moral, political, mental health, philosophical and sociological grounds were overwhelming and a majority of Senators listened and blocked the legislation. There will be no plebiscite in Australia and young gay people have been saved the opprobrium of the homophobes and the bigots. The LGBTI community will have to wait for marriage equality. And wait we will, because the alternative, change at any price, is too costly. A price we were not prepared to pay. The price for change, good change, would have been one step forward, two steps back. America missed its opportunity here to replicate our behaviour and got wrong what the Aussie gays got right. The end does not justify the means.

Donald Trump ran a campaign that was almost total in its lack of policy detail. He railed against every minority he could and turned a blind eye to violence in his own rallies. He implied that Hillary could have been happily shot. He mocked a disabled reporter. He set up an ‘us and them’ model of the United States and the world; a model where the ‘us’ is white, straight and male.

Half the population of eligible voters didn’t even bother to turn up to vote to stop this. This result is on them. Millennials didn’t show up to vote; some of whom were probably the Bernie or Bust crowd. Their apathy and/or their idealism has allowed Trump into the Oval Office for four years. This result is on them. White women, unimaginably, voted for him. This result is on them. Over 80% of Evangelical Christians, with their eye to stacking the Supreme Court in order to overturn Roe vs Wade and marriage equality, ignored their teacher’s Sermon on the Mount, and voted for Trump. Rank hypocrisy and derailed religion. Even 75% of evangelical women voted for him. This result is on them.

Blogger John Pavlovitz put it this way. By voting for change at any price:

“They have aligned with the wall-builder and the professed p*ssy-grabber, and they have co-signed his body of work, regardless of the reasons they give for their vote:

Every horrible thing Donald Trump ever said about women or Muslims or people of color has now been validated.

Every profanity-laced press conference and every call to bully protestors and every ignorant diatribe has been endorsed.

Every piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation Mike Pence has championed has been signed-off on.

Half of our country has declared these things acceptable, noble, American”.

It is breath-taking in its short-sightedness. Some said they voted this way because they were rallying against “political correctness.” This term is one of great contention. It has moved between the Left and the Right since the beginning the twentieth century. Originally, and differently used to the modern phrase, it was used by Marxists. It then moved to social progressives in mid-century and was finally appropriated by the Right in the nineties. It is a concept that describes the policing of language and representation of minorities. In the mouth of the Right, it is a pejorative and used satirically. In the mouth of the Left, it is a genuine desire to see societies progress from older traditional understandings of minorities in the light of more modern scholarship and superior understanding and to use better and more sensitive language when representing them. In this usage, it is an appeal to egalitarianism. Spiritually, it is an acceptance of the family of humanity, where no individual or group is better than another, that we are, indeed, a family of humanity inhabiting this tiny blue dot together in the vastness of the cosmos.

When I was a child in the 1960s, I heard adults and everyday people use epithets to refer to Australia’s Indigenous, Greeks, Italians, and Chinese that were racist and hurtful. As society has progressed and values have changed, these lexical items have fallen rightly into disfavour and are seen as politically incorrect. It is a term with which I am perfectly comfortable. I want to be politically correct in my language and in my representation of minorities, not least because I am one of them: a gay man. Egalitarianism is one of the most important values in my life. I want the world I live in to be egalitarian. I want to see women equal to men in every sphere of life. I want to see the elderly valued as much as youth, the disabled as much as the able-bodied. I want to see gay people the equal of straight people in every sphere of life. I want to see the masculinity of gay men the equal to that of straight men. I want us to discard older ways of seeing things and describing things and embrace a more egalitarian model. I see the phrase ‘politically correct’ as being synonymous with ‘egalitarian’.

If the voters in America are voting as a backlash against political correctness, then for me, they are not egalitarian. They do not believe in equality. They accept that some people are not as valuable as others. They are happy to endorse the candidate whose very election the Klu Klux Klan is celebrating as a great victory. I can never accept this, no matter the need for change. Change at any price is unconscionable.

Finally, there is still the gender issue at play in this result. Hillary Clinton was not able to break the glass ceiling despite being the better candidate in this particular election, and perhaps one of the most qualified candidates across all elections. America has missed a wonderful opportunity by rejecting this woman. The right-wing mythos that has sprung up around her that she is crooked and corrupt and a criminal is just that; unjust, nasty, and misogynistic nonsense. She has been a hard-working individual her whole life: in the law, as an assistant to her husband as First Lady when he was President, as a Senator for New York and as a tireless Secretary of State. Her very existence and indomitable praxis challenges the old patriarchy.

At a time when the world needed to hear a strong human rights advocate, America has fouled its own nest by electing an unworthy. When radical Islamism tries to propagate its teachings, which include the subjugation of women, a female American President would have been a clarion cry to the whole globe that such is not the way, that women are the equal of men, that girls should aspire to the heights as do boys, and that education is a powerful way to improve your lot.

Hillary Clinton has been an outspoken friend to gay people. In December 2011, we saw her publicly declare to a United Nations meeting in Geneva in front of a number of world leaders who were not so enamoured with her message, that “gay rights are human rights”. Her speech was powerful and still reverberates around the world in human rights and LGBTI discourse and offers a necessary corrective to those nations who would dispute such a claim.

I am so pleased the vast majority of African American women voted for her and did so in vast numbers. That a significant portion of white women did not is more than unfortunate and perplexing. It was fool-hardy and self-defeating. The world will have to wait for its first female President, probably from the Democratic Party, and whoever she may be, she will no doubt remember and honour the immense debt she owes to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In the courts of ancient Rome, the lawyers used sometimes to distinguish been a vir bonus (a good man) and a petitor bonus (a good claimant). The former was seen to be a virtuous man due to his behavior. The latter was thus ascribed only if he had a good case to argue before the courts; something substantial the lawyers could take and prosecute persuasively. Allow me to paraphrase the same two epithets if you will for the modern era and in the case of this American election. Donald Trump is neither a vir bonus, a good man, nor a petitor bonus, a good candidate. His behavior has shown up his character to be unworthy of this highest of offices and as a role model for the young, and his platform, his case, has been one of exclusion, divisiveness, aggressiveness, bullying and appeals to narcissism. Donald Trump was never in this for America. He was only ever in it for Donald. It’s only ever been about Donald. And he fooled everyone. 

In voting him into the Presidency, America has miscalculated on a global scale. It will end in tears. Not three days after his election, there is already a massive upsurge in racist violence in schools and across the United States; such aggressors emboldened by the presence and the words of their new Commander-in-Chief. And in voting him and not Hillary Clinton into this role, America has missed a once-only opportunity to have this sophisticated, intelligent, witty, highly qualified, charming woman as its first female President who could have brought about change in better and more noble ways. 

Plebiscite - They Must Be Afraid They’ll Lose

What is the matter with the gays? They want same-sex marriage, don’t they? Why don’t they want a plebiscite? Why are they so afraid of it? Are they scared they’ll lose it?

This is a very common sentiment to be read in the marriage equality debate in Australia. Here's why it's wrong.

While there are some very sound arguments against holding a marriage equality plebiscite, including cost ($160 million), the fact it is non-binding (politicians can ignore it and some have said they will) and the fact there will still have to be a free vote in the Parliament after all the trouble the nation has been put to, LGBTI people have another set of concerns. To suggest that the LGBTI community is fearful of a plebiscite because we're worried we’ll lose it is very wide of the mark. There are some important reasons why we oppose it, including philosophical, social and personal, but none of them include the idea we're worried we'll lose it.

1.      The plebiscite was created by opponents of marriage equality. It is not part of the national debate because we all thought it was a great idea to get the conversation going. Far from it. Put simply, the plebiscite was conceived, birthed and nurtured by Tony Abbott, the implacable enemy of marriage equality, whose antipathy to gays is well-known and documented. Supported by a cabal of ultra-conservatives fighting to keep their ascendancy in the LNP (Abetz, Andrews, Bernardi and Christensen), they have stamped their names all over this debate and have openly stated they will ignore the vote if it goes against them. They instituted it for one reason and one reason only: in order to delay a vote in the Parliament as an interim strategy so they could kill it off totally further down the track. 

  

2.      The LGBTI community does not want this plebiscite. It's about us and we don’t want it. A recent poll shows that almost all LGBTI people oppose having the plebiscite. How would you feel if you didn't want to be evaluated but it was forced on you? You'd probably feel like us: upset, angry, frustrated, devalued. We were told by the Government that it was a plebiscite or nothing. But as we moved forward in the debate, many of us realised that this was a false dichotomy. It’s not a plebiscite or nothing. There are alternatives, political and social. You have to remember that the LGBTI community is a minority, and a minority that has a long association with persecution. It is very easy for the majority to jackboot over the group with fewer numbers or less power. This can be done with any minorities: LGBTI, disabled, ethnic, religious, unemployed, youth, the aged etc. But a modern society does not do that; or at least aspires not to do that. The way we treat minorities is often held up as the criterion by which a society is judged as being fair and sophisticated. To the extent it treats its minorities poorly, it is deemed a less compassionate and sophisticated society. The way we treat minorities is the way that we ourselves can be treated by others should circumstances be different.

3.     Marriage equality is about equal treatment under the law. And equal treatment should never be at the whim of a popular opinion poll. It should be enshrined in legislation. Our push for marriage equality is not hard to understand. We are good citizens, we make a huge contribution in every field of endeavour, we pay our taxes, we keep the social contract and we want to be treated equally under the law. This means we want to be able to have the choice to marry and have the social affirmation that such a relationship brings should we want to. Equality under the law. That’s it. Nothing else. We see equality under the law as a human rights issue, not an opinion poll issue. So does the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The proposed change to the Marriage Act to extend the right of marriage to same-sex partners so that we can be treated equally with everyone else is for the Parliament to decide as the High Court has already pronounced.

4.      The question of marriage equality is not appropriate for a public opinion poll. The worth of our relationships should not be up for evaluation by the Australian populace. Australia is made up of many and varied opinions with many vestiges of homophobia, gay bigotry and even gay hate. The ACL and other fundamentalists believe that being gay is a sin, an abomination and against nature. It is not right that they be given the opportunity to evaluate gay relationships when they could not possibly understand them and are implacably opposed to them. No. It is no-one’s business whether two people get married apart from the couple themselves. It is their business alone. Two straight people contemplating marriage would be aghast if they had to pass a national plebiscite test to obtain permission. In fact, a recent poll indicates just that: a clear majority of straight people said they would feel very uncomfortable having to face a plebiscite over their own marriage.

Let me elucidate this point. Let's say hypothetically that a proposal for a national plebiscite were put to the nation to evaluate whether:

·         couples, where the woman is over the age of 30, are not permitted to have children; or

·         people who have not been born in Australia are to be to be taxed at a 10% higher rate than everyone else; or

·         smokers be denied hospital treatment paid for by the public purse.

There are Australians who would fervently agree with each of these propositions. But if you were in one of those categories, the cry would go up and there would be marching in the streets. "How dare you propose public evaluation of these personal issues. It is an outrage" would be the response. But the plebiscite proponent could say, "What are you worried about? What could be more democratic than letting the people have their say?"
"BECAUSE", you would shout ferociously, "IT'S NOT A MATTER FOR THE PEOPLE. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC QUESTION. OUR PERSONAL LIVES ARE NOT FODDER FOR A PUBLIC OPINION POLL. THE NATION’S SOCIAL COHESION IS NOT TO BE PUT TO A VOTE. IT'S NOT AN APPROPRIATE ISSUE TO BE PUT TO THE PEOPLE." And you would be right. None of the above hypotheticals are appropriate for plebiscite. Gay people are saying exactly the same thing about our right to marry our partners. It is not an appropriate question to be put to a public opinion poll. It is demeaning and humiliating.

5.      A plebiscite will be harmful to individuals and families. We are very fearful of the harm a plebiscite debate will cause, not only to the LGBTI community, but to the fabric of the nation itself. It will open up a voluble nasty bitter campaign from opponents who will not hesitate to conflate marriage equality issues with other issues. It will force gay people to have to defend ourselves constantly. Posters and advertisements from opponents will be paraded in front of us on daily basis. This happened in Ireland and campaigners have stated to Australian MPs here that it was absolutely brutal. Irish psychologists have reported increased numbers of very distressed people. Gay people know that the Prime Minister is being either disingenuous or deluded when he says the debate here will be respectful. He obviously has not seen or heard some of the stuff that is out there already if he believes that. Children in same-sex parented families do not need to go through such nastiness. And when the campaign begins officially, it will only get more heated and worse in every way. The LGBTI community does not need this. We are already a persecuted group by the Church and other groups. We are tired of the oppression and utterly reject the legitimisation of it in a plebiscite campaign.

6.      A plebiscite will be divisive to the nation. Australia will be riven by such a divisive debate and LGBTI issues could be contaminated as always being problematic, which they are not. Australia is usually seen as a fair and just society, one of the most entirely successful nations on the planet. Setting one group over another will never be a good thing for our social cohesion. It defies belief that it is being contemplated.

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Marriage equality is a step of social progress whose time has come. It is inevitable in Australia at some point in the future that same-sex couples will be able to marry. Religious and political conservatives are determined to stymie it any way they can and in so doing are making the lives of LGBTI people miserable and unhappy. We leave them to the judgment of the people and to their own consciences. Gay people are made to feel not valued and unworthy in this hurtful proposition. There are already enough MPs in the House of Representatives (at last count 84 where 76 is a majority) and 41 in the Senate (where 39 is a majority) to pass the legislation easily. We could have marriage equality by the end of next week and save ourselves all the harm, all the hurt, all the divisiveness and $160 million to boot, if there was just the political will and even just a modicum of values-based leadership.

So you see, the LGBTI community opposes a plebiscite not because we're scared we'd lose it, but because of the philosophical and practical consequences that such a debate would mean for us. The plebiscite itself? On the numbers, most would agree that it would pass. But at what cost? So much hurt. So much destruction. Vulnerable young people subjected to hate and invalidation.

So many gay people now are saying what I'm saying. Let's abandon or block the plebiscite and if the Government won't allow the Parliament to debate it and have a free vote, then I'm happy to wait until the next election to turf the whole lot of them out. And if that means three years, then three years it is. I'd rather have the New Zealand experience of the Parliament of the people voting 'Yes' with the gallery and MPs bursting into the traditional love song Pokarekare ana than the filth and ugliness that a plebiscite would open us up to. The New Zealand experience should be the Australian experience.

  

What To Do With Pauline Hanson

It would appear that the resurrection of Pauline Hanson is now complete. How did it come to this? A washed-up failed politician who has stood at just about every election since she lost her seat in the House of Representatives in 1998 after just one term. A peddler of ignorance. Denigrating of academic expertise. An undoubted racist. A homophobe. Anti-intellectual. An individual who did more damage to Australia’s international reputation than almost anything or anyone before we started incarcerating refugees indefinitely on Pacific islands in more recent years. A purveyor of White Australia Policy sensibilities, long renounced by the nation. And now she has won a seat in the Senate.

As she once draped herself in the Australian flag for an election photo, she will now be draped in the legitimacy that being a member of the Senate will bestow her. She will be addressed by the honorific ‘Senator’ and she will enjoy these privileges and this platform for either three or six years. Three or six years to contaminate the nation with falsely legitimised lies. Three or six years to be a power block in negotiations with the government of the day. By any standard, having Pauline Hanson with this much influence and power is a nightmare scenario.

I do not want to speak exhaustively about how this came to be. There will be a plethora of analysis on that question over the coming weeks. Suffice to say, the two major parties are struggling for traction with a lot of people and there are a lot of disaffected electors who are moving their votes to other places. On the left side, the disaffected are moving from the ALP to the Greens, to Xenophon and to other minor progressive parties or individuals. On the right, the more centrist of the disaffected are moving from the Coalition to Xenophon, while the even more right are moving to Hanson.

These Hanson voters are the people who, generally speaking, are less educated, more locally fixated, and who yearn for a past Australia where everybody is white, straight and Christian, and where Australia is not so intimately connected to the rest of the world. They unhesitatingly ‘other’ and then demonise any individual or group who doesn’t fit this mould. It is easy for them intellectually to scapegoat such people for the ills and lack of progress in society. They have a very negatively skewed vision of the nation and see little good in the progress that Australia has made over the last decades. They eschew complexity for simplistic populist answers that are often associated with either their own hip pocket or when they fear their world is moving too fast for them. Of course, the others they pick on the most are non-white immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, people of colour generally, Australia’s indigenous people, people who have different religions other than Christianity, even if their own allegiance to Christianity is barely nominal at best, people who don’t fit in to their worldview: white, straight, Christian.

A summary of some of One Nation’s most objectionable policies, all found in detail on their website, makes for depressing reading. No-body could quibble or argue with intellectual honesty that they are not racist to the core, mean-spirited, inward looking, backward looking, anti-intellectual and homophobic.

•          Install surveillance cameras in all mosques
•          Hold a royal commission into the corruption of climate change science
•          Stop Muslim immigration and the intake of Muslim refugees
•          Oppose Marriage Equality as it could lead to adults marrying 9 year old children
•          Abolish multiculturalism and the Racial Discrimination Act
•          Ban Halal certification
•          Opposes taking guns from law abiding citizens
•          Ban the burqa and the niquab in public places

This is the platform Hanson ran on. This is the platform Hanson won on. With regard to her supporters, it really does mean that the major parties have a lot of work on front of them to not only counter such outrageous ugliness, but also to win back her supporters from such extremism.

Hanson’s overt racism is actually a throwback to earlier twentieth century forms of racism. After the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, racism tended to become more covert and serpentine, as racists were reluctant to wear the stigma that was becoming associated with its overt expression. But with the beginning of this new century, there has been a resurgence of more open and public racism. It is actually a nineteenth century phenomenon that views so-called ‘inborn worth’, ‘differential genetic capacity’ and ‘cultural development’ as ways of ranking people, and it coincided with the rise of nationalism. It appropriated the prestige of nineteenth century science as its authority. But twentieth and twenty first century science, especially in molecular biology, has found that the concept of race has no basis in fundamental biology and should be abandoned wholesale. In fact, it has found there is more genetic variance within racial groupings than between them. 

Negative views about a group, ethnic, religious or otherwise, eg., LGBTI, are typically made up of stereotypes and are very difficult to budge regardless of evidence to the contrary. Typically, a counterexample to the stereotype will be viewed merely as an exception to the rule, and the prejudice will remain. Hanson’s racism and bigotry does not value science, sociology, psychology, history, religious understandings or any other complex medium through which to understand diverse groups in society. Hers is a shallow world.

There is a pitfall here. Pauline Hanson has a certain appeal to Australians on an unconscious level. She is an uneducated single battler ready to stand up to the big guns for what she believes. It is the stuff of one of our most beloved movies, The Castle. She has a faltering voice while being interviewed and so she appears with a certain degree of vulnerability. Like a lamb in a slaughterhouse surrounded by nasty media and politicians. She’s the ordinary person, the lone female, the battler, the working woman, the everywoman. Unlike others, she can speak honestly and from the heart. She’s one of us. Poor Pauline. Brave Pauline. Australians since colonisation have always lauded such people. We do not share America's admiration and lionisation of national institutions. We have our own sensibility. Historically, we distrust authority, whether it be the government, the police, the church, big business, or any other authoritarian entity. It’s part of our convict DNA and we are proud of it. I happen to think that it is not only one of our most endearing qualities, but a feature of Australianness that has served us well by helping us to keep a check on the power elites. And Pauline Hanson’s apparent vulnerability taps into that national psyche.

But Pauline Hanson is not as she seems. She is not the innocent and brave lamb. Her public statements about everything from Muslims to gays to indigenous to refugees to scientists, all found without effort online, are both ignorant and flagrantly egregious. Her lack of education is no excuse. She’s had twenty years since her last term in Parliament to get herself educated. She is drowning in ignorance and hopes to flood the land with it.

So what to do?

First, I disagree with certain columnists and LNP MPs who say that because she has been voted in by a considerable number of people, she should be respected. That we should listen to what she has to say.

Bunkum, I say. Sorry, but that is just plain wrong. I have read her manifesto. I know what’s in it. Her beliefs are ugly, divisive, disrespectful and demeaning. They are racist to the core and xenophobia and bigotry drip from her lips whenever she opens her mouth. None of this is worthy of respect. Much of it amounts to hate-speech. We should not offer respect. God, we should not offer her a microphone! Yes, she has a right to her beliefs. I will not dispute that. But she doesn’t have an automatic get of gaol free card in regards to being respected just because some other racists and bigots voted for her. Her platform is monstrous and intolerable and cannot be respected. To suggest it should be, is abusive to her victims.

Second, after the massacre in Orlando of my gay brothers and sisters in the Pulse nightclub, I am now disinclined to be to understanding of bigots. I am firmer in my beliefs that bigotry is unacceptable in a caring society and should be rejected out of hand. I think I am not alone in this. I feel now that wherever we hear it, we should call it out for the filth that it is and not mince words.

Hanson often speaks in generalisations such as, ‘most Australians do not like Muslims coming here’ or most Australians think indigenous people are lazy’. Wrong. We should call out the generalisations and the sweeping statements and the other rhetorical errors she uses and if necessary refute them with facts and figures. These sorts of statements would not pass a 1^st year course at University or TAFE. They certainly should not pass for worthy political discourse in Australia. Her rubbish opinions need to be shown up for the fatuous excrement they are. She should not be allowed to get away with a single racist or anti-Muslim or homophobic comment. Not one. The nation should descend on her utterances with a single voice. Cut her no slack. Give her not an inch. I would be happy to see her struggle for air time and media space and have to struggle for every single thing she does politically while she is in the Parliament.

The last thing Australia needs now in a world that is somewhat disjointed and untrusting is a legitimisation of fascist racist bigots, whether in the Parliament or out of it. Our multi-culturalism is a jewel in the nation’s crown. We have navigated multi-culturalism perhaps better than any other nation on earth. For decades, it has helped shape the wonderful society that we enjoy. Our country is so much richer for having had peoples from other lands join us here, and the thinkers among us know that we all came here from other lands originally and joined an ancient culture tens of thousands of years old.

While I have seen many jokes and funny memes about Pauline Hanson, I actually do not think she is a laughing matter. And really, I do not think that ridicule will make a difference. Frankly, I don’t think she’s intelligent enough to understand the satire anyhow. Hanson will be a destructive force in our nation for some years to come. We should do our level best to minimise the damage both nationally and internationally. We should hold her up to account on every occasion and call a racist a racist. 

Orlando and Australia's Marriage Equality Plebiscite

Matt Glover - used with permission

The slaughter of the innocents in Florida has touched us all. With Orlando searing into our minds; the merciless death, the unspeakable horror, the unnecessary loss of beautiful lives and remarkable futures, the unutterable anguish of those left behind, the deep trauma to a community, and an LGBT community world-wide feeling once again set upon, Australia’s LGBT community stands in solidarity and profound grief with our brothers and sisters in Orlando as we know only too well that it could have been one of our loved ones had circumstances been just a little different. Circumstances were different when we lost one of our own from the Lindt café siege. Gay hate knows no national boundaries.

But this heinous action has come for Australia in the middle of a marriage equality debate; the next logical step in the long road to freedom of LGBT people in this country. By far, the most important and hotly argued topic of this issue is the Tony Abbott plebiscite that was designed to forestall a vote in the Parliament. We all know that that Malcolm ‘I haven’t changed one iota’ Turnbull has agreed with the conservatives of his party on this issue and acquiesced to their demands in order to obtain the Prime Ministership. A deal was done. Even one of their own, John Hewson, admitted that. A sordid deal was done. We all know that Malcolm Turnbull spruiks the need for democracy, for giving the people a voice, whenever he is asked about this issue. That is his serpentine excuse for putting the country through this demeaning plebiscite. I note that never once have I heard him advocate for marriage equality or prosecute its merits. He simply declares that he agrees with it but then says or does nothing about it. To use a powerful Australianism – it is a piss-poor response from a Prime Minister who could wield immense influence but chooses not to. His agreement with marriage equality is frankly worthless if that is all there is to it. Legislation could pass the Parliament today without his vote.

While Malcolm Turnbull declares disingenuously that it will be an ordered respectful affair, those of us on the receiving end of such debates know better. America is already reeling with the tweet of the Texas Lt. Governor quoting the “God will not be mocked” scripture implying that gay people dancing and enjoying a night club is a mocking of God. Then you get the religious nutters like Westboro Baptist congratulating the shooter, and the pastor who advocates that, though he would never take the law into his own hands, gay people should be legally executed by the Government. That guy is happy the shooter murdered these people so that the world will have “50 less paedophiles”. But don’t for a minute think that this kind of thing is only done in the mad Bible belt of America. Not so.

Only a few weeks ago, the president of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton, likened the advent of marriage equality here to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s saying, “The cowardice and weakness of Australia's 'gatekeepers' is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s” (my italics). Christian fundamentalists here never tire of telling us all that being gay is unnatural, against the order of nature, an intrinsic disorder, an inclination toward moral evil, an abomination, a rejection of God, a profanity, a sin, and worthy of eternal punishment. Why, only three days ago, I endured a pentecostal pastor on a Facebook post about asylum seeker policy, and read by many LGBT people, declare, “gay marriage – Abomination – black and white opposed to God”.

All the arguments that marriage equality will destroy marriage and harm children and hurt the nation are all just so much hot air and have been thoroughly and convincingly debunked by facts and sound logic for a long time now. 

There are bigoted reasons why Australians should reject marriage equality, 

but there are no good reasons.

We are a non-discriminatory pluralist secular nation that is not a theocracy and that is not governed by popular plebiscite.

But the Abbott plebiscite will allow every antagonist, every opponent, every religious fundamentalist, every bigot, every homophobe, every hate-filled rogue element, a tax-payer funded free kick to say whatever they like and do so with virtual impunity. The plebiscite debate will demean gay relationships by preparing the ground for ‘a frank and firm public evaluation of our relationships’ and creating a context for hate-speech and calumny of every description. It will be argued strongly that our relationships are not of the quality that should be attached to the word ‘marriage’ and every nasty trick in the book will be brought out by some who do not mind getting down into the gutter. How utterly demeaning! While we’re at it, just to be fair, should we not throw Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull’s as well as Tony and Margy Abbott’s relationships into the plebiscite for public evaluation too?

Orlando is the polar end of the spectrum. Hatred, violence and murder. The actions of this lone gunman have been shaped by historical forces that prepared the ground for his murderous rage and found voice and took shape in either his neurosis or his ideological affiliation. At the other end of the spectrum are the little question marks over the morality of gay people that the pentecostal minister might ask, or the speculation about paedophilia made by the conservative politician, ever so politely, linking it with gay people, or the declaration of God’s judgement on our land made by a Fred Nile or a Lyle Shelton quoting 2 Chronicles 7: 14 and equating gay people with the “wicked ways” that God will heal us from if only we would repent. 

Orlando does not happen in a vacuum. Orlando does not happen free from powerful social and psychological forces that should have been challenged. Gay hate, prejudice, bigotry and homophobia do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in a social context, where push-back against change occurs out of fear and ignorance and goes unchallenged.

In this context, it is wrong to push ahead in Australia with a marriage plebiscite.

It should be abandoned - totally, utterly and unequivocally.

Let the opponents of marriage equality jump up and down and scream blue murder all they like, but this invitation to public bigotry should be abandoned. It is unnecessary, harmful, costly, and very unwise, given that it has the potential to fuel the rage of the deranged or the dogma of the religionist. Turnbull’s ‘what could be more democratic than giving people a say’? is disingenuous and dangerous. The numbers are already there in the Parliament to pass proposed marriage equality legislation and with over two thirds of the population backing it in support, this is a no-brainer.

We have seen public racism get a foot-hold in this country with hooded bands of racist thugs marching in our streets equating their perverted ideology with love of country. The modern version of this started by allowing Pauline Hanson’s words to go unchallenged in the 1990s. The genie was let out of the bottle. The same mistake cannot be allowed to be made with homophobia and gay-hate. It must be challenged at every turn and certainly not given a respectable platform in the guise of a national plebiscite. Conservative and religious voices overstep the mark when they start playing with this kind of rhetorical fire. Good people get burned. You only have to look at Orlando.

The plebiscite is immoral and demeaning. It is wrong to pursue it. It must be abandoned.

Into The Long Grass - Conservative Treachery

On a major social issue, Australia is now in the grip of the worst joke since the White Australia policy, and it’s just about as funny. Gay people are not equal before the law and are still not allowed to marry our partners in this country, despite many of us having gone to the expense and inconvenience of leaving these shores, travelling overseas and getting married in other more enlightened jurisdictions where marriage equality is a reality. Australia ostentatiously lags behind the rest of the Western world on this issue. And what is the cause of all this? Two words: the conservatives.

Prior to 2004, the wording of our Marriage Act did not specify gender at all. Stand up John Howard. He changed the wording to specify man and woman solely, after seeing marriage equality slowly but surely becoming a reality around various states in the US world and in Europe, and so, rushed the legislation through the Parliament, thereby blocking any possibility that same-gender marriage could evolve in this country. He didn’t take it to a plebiscite, just to the Parliament. Interestingly, unlike his present-day descendants, he had this remarkable thing to say.

“We've decided to insert this into the Marriage Act to make it very plain that that is our view of a marriage and to also make it very plain that the definition of a marriage is something that should rest in the hands ultimately of the parliament of the nation. (It should) not over time be subject to redefinition or change by courts, it is something that ought to be expressed through the elected representatives of the country.'' Oops, it looks like the present crop didn’t get that memo. Interesting, don’t you think?

Fast forward a decade or so and the infamous love-child of Howard and Bronwyn Bishop, Tony Abbott, an even more conservative backward looking monarchist 50s man than Howard, is in office as Prime Minister. Apart from rusted on arch-conservatives, he is near universally disliked and by many, despised. He was only voted in because he wasn’t Gillard or Rudd; hardly a ringing endorsement. There were no palm fronds cast onto the road in front of Abbott’s entourage as he slipped into Canberra.

This is a man who on 7 March 2010 told a 60 Minutes interviewer in response to a question about homosexual people that, despite having a gay sister himself, he "probably [felt] a bit threatened ... as most people do." He defended the assertion on the ABC’s 7.30 two nights later as a “spontaneous answer” and went on to say, "there is no doubt that it [homosexuality] challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things." This is the guy who subsequently becomes Prime Minister of Australia; a man who has not the first idea about LGBT people and our lives and who is implacably, rigidly and unwaveringly opposed to marriage equality. If gay marriage were ever to get up during his term of office, it would be over his dead body.

Just before he lost power due to the relentless abysmal polling he received in over thirty consecutive polls, and with the Government looking more and more like a one-term government because of him, the marriage equality issue came once again to the fore due to the submission of a suggested bill put up by one of his own, Warren Entsch. Abbott had already pronounced only a week or so before, that no party would own marriage equality and that if it were to become reality in this country, it would do so as a result of the whole Parliament. Sounds a lot like John Howard’s stated position, doesn’t it? But don’t be fooled. It’s all smoke and mirrors. There are a lot of them in this debate. Instead, because of the Entsch bill, a hastily called party room meeting was announced and all party members had to stop their work to attend the Tony Abbott Marriage Equality workshop for the day. At the end of it, the Parliament was superseded and forgotten and Australia was to have a plebiscite on the issue instead; a non-binding poll. And not at the next election, but sometime after the next election; say six to twelve months after. Abbott’s conservative mates like Abetz, Andrews, Bernardi and Fierravanti-Wells, to name a few, were enough to carry the day. Abbot got his way and fudged the whole the thing, proudly rejoicing in democracy because now, everyone would have a say.

Conservative religious folk, also implacably opposed to marriage equality, thought all their Christmases had come at once. The issue had been kicked down the road, off into the misty future, and reframed by marriage quality public enemy number 1 as a vox populi democratic issue. The Australian Christian Lobby’s President Lyle Shelton wrote on an American blog: “Instead, a people’s vote known as a plebiscite would be held sometime after the 2016 election, kicking the issue into the long grass (putting the issue off) and blunting the momentum of same-sex marriage lobbyists” (my italics).

No doubt embarrassed that these words have found the light of day, they have belled the cat and tolled the truth of this plebiscite. It is nothing but a ruse, a tactic, a way to delay, to obfuscate, to impede and to push the issue off the front pages. Abbott knew it. The ACL knows it. Turnbull knows it. All of Australia knows it, given that over two-thirds of us are supportive of a change to the Marriage Act already and have been for some time. It is a transparent tactic; worthy of Lao-Tzu.

Now, a human rights issue was going to be voted on. In any domain of Western jurisprudence, that is a no no. It is an absolute. You don't vote on human rights. They are not for the vote. Human rights are never to be given. They are only to be recognised. They belong to us all; as human beings. They do not lay in the purview of any man to give. And they do not lay in the voting intentions of an entire nation. Human rights are of a different order than say, education policy or health policy. They are over and above such quotidian issues, important though they may be. In a Western representative democracy like Australia’s, it is Justice 101 that all are equal under the law. Human rights are to be respected. And where we are found wanting occasionally or could do better, we adjust and change our ways to conform to the higher good, that of human rights.

Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission wrote in an opinion piece in The Age. “Under article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights all people ‘are equal before the law and entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law’. The Australian Human Rights Commission considers that this principle of equality means that civil marriage should be available, without discrimination, to all couples, regardless of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity. - - - Of immediate relevance to Australia's proposed plebiscite, is the [US] Supreme Court's view that fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote. Rather, ‘they depend on the outcome of no elections’. In principle, why should the right to equality in marriage depend upon a plebiscite”? Indeed, it shouldn’t.

As a result of this farce, my relationship and tens of thousands like it around the country, will be judged and voted on by bigots and homophobes and the ignorant who despise us. Our status in the nation will be evaluated by other Australians; something I dare say, not one of them would be comfortable with. Conservative politicians and religious folk who confirm our relationships as being of second-class worth see this exercise as something good and noble.

I have already written a piece about the plebiscite and you can read my argument against it here.

Since Malcolm Turnbull unseated Tony Abbott and took the prime ministership, he has been lumbered with almost all of Abbott’s far-right policies, including the plebiscite; the $160 million waste of money that even now, conservative politicians are saying they will not abide by regardless and will still vote against marriage equality though their electorates be supportive. It’s the usual suspects. Abbott should be counted among them. Then there will be Abetz, Andrews, Fierravanti-Wells, as well now as Bridget McKenzie who told the media this week that she will vote against marriage equality no matter what the plebiscite turns up. And oh, it was like getting blood out of a stone for her to admit this publicly. Seems she didn’t want to own her own intentions on the record.

These conservatives and others not so public are said to be voting with their consciences. 

Apparently, their consciences are perfectly okay with inequality before the law (one law for straight people and a different law for gay people), consciences just fine with the hurt and pain caused by relationships deemed second-rate, consciences just peachy with young gay people getting the message from Government that ‘we don’t care what you want’, consciences that sleep well at night knowing that over two-thirds of Australians disagree with them but they don’t give a stuff anyway, consciences that are jim dandy with depriving gay couples the affirmation of acceptance and celebration by society even when society has said it is perfectly happy to offer that affirmation. You gotta love the conservative conscience. These people alone stand in the way of Australian marriage equality.

So what of Turnbull? He is increasingly looking weak. Abbott does not hesitate to prosecute his own case. He’s out and about everywhere. This week, he’s in America telling a right-wing homophobic lobby group that marriage equality will “erode” the family and “damage” marriage. Rubbish I say Mr Abbott. Show us how that is to happen. The burden of proof is on you. Show us the evidence of erosion and damage.

But in all this, where’s our great enlightened moderate Liberal hope Malcolm Turnbull? Silent as the grave. Just mouthing the party line. Inanities about plebiscites and democracy. Repeating the words and policies of his political nemesis. It’s pathetic and he is looking more and more pathetic every day. Turnbull looks and sounds weak; a pusillanimous puppet of the Right. If he truly believes in marriage equality, then let him advocate for it and stop vacating the field to the likes of Bernardi and Abetz and Abbott. Let him use his considerable influence as Prime Minister to do some good for the country on this issue. Let him not be like Gillard who squandered her chance to do something when she had the power to do so. Turnbull really needs to grow a spine. He might be moderate, but if he presides over a far-right government and allows that discourse to fill the conversation, then his moderate credentials amount to zero. He is moderate in name only and will ultimately become a laughing stock. When a leader loses the respect of the nation, he or she is in deep trouble.

What a farce this has turned into. We have a weak pathetic Prime Minister who is scared of his own party and who won’t even advocate the issues he believes in. We’ve got an inordinately expensive unnecessary plebiscite which will be ignored by some conservative politicians anyway. We ‘ve got the unedifying spectacle of Australians being asked to vote on human rights. We’ve given bigots and homophobes equal standing in their views about gay peoples’ lives as us ourselves. We will still have to have a vote in the Parliament. And the whole thing is off in the never never somewhere.

What an utter disgrace! This is how we do social policy in Australia. This is how we treat people in Turnbull’s Australia.

If Turnbull fudges this, it will never be forgotten.

  

A Way In A Manger

I’ve been thinking a bit about Christmas and what it means to me these days. The Christmas story is so well-known and so re-told that it has pretty well lost traction with most non-churchy Australians now. While they may know the bones of the story, we have probably come to a generation or even two, who don’t know much more than those bones and have never thought much about it. But rather than me fleshing out the skeletal remains of the Christmas story here – others can do that far better than me – I thought I might just say a word or two about some of the metaphors in the story that are there to be found without too much analysis and what they might say to us today.

First, notice how according to the account, Mary and Joseph are to give birth to this child who was conceived in a miraculous way. This is not the only story that has such a phenomenon and it goes to the notion that this boy will be special. That he will be a gift, maybe from God, to humanity. As a special boy, he is certainly one to be watched as he grows. As a boy born in a special way, he is to be watched to see what he will do and what he says. Even the heavens seem to bare witness, in the Star of Bethlehem, that this is a special birth and that we should take notice.

But second, despite the specialness of his birth, we notice how even at this neonatal stage of his life, goodness even while he’s still in the womb, he is rejected and no-one wants to know him. There is no room in the inn for the likes of Jesus. He doesn’t fit in. Never did. Still doesn’t. I felt like that growing up. In fact, lots of people do. Instead, he gets shoved out the back with the low-lifes and the animals and gets born in a barn. He doesn’t get born in a hotel or a palace, with comfort and trappings and honour. No, not for this one. His birth will be mired in dishonour and disapproval.

In this, this little baby would set up a life-long custom of associating with such people. The marginalised we call them today. Undesirables, like tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, Roman collaborators, unclean people, the sick, the lame, the demon-possessed. It’s not so difficult to translate that lot into modern language; the down and outs, the drug addicts, the alcoholics, people in and out of gaol, sex workers - but also the ordinary people who don’t fit in, like the gays and the trans people, the eccentric, the geeks, the ordinary looking, the uneducated, the selfish, the ego-centric, the poor, the HIV AIDS folk, the person of colour, the foreigner, the refugee. A little later, this boy and his family would become Middle Eastern refugees themselves and flee tyranny and persecution. Ring any bells for those who want to block the refugees and asylum seekers today?

I cannot also help but note the absence of religious figures from his own tradition at his birth; no rabbis, no priests and no religious piety or ritual – just some ratty-looking smelly shepherds and a couple of astrologers from another land and a different tradition who seem to recognise something in him. It was always going to be these people, the ones not in charge, whom this boy would associate with. And he would do it for the rest of his life. Even to the point where later on, the privileged would mock him for it.

It was these people that he would later say that to such belonged the Kingdom of Heaven. Apparently, he thought that God was somehow connected and concerned with such people in a special way. And because he himself associated solely with such folk, it really didn’t take too long before he became one of them. Or as I like to think of it; one of us. If incarnational theology has any truth to it, then it is that this boy was one of us. In other words, he was not an elite; he was like me.

As a gay man, I belong to a group which has traditionally been relegated to the ‘other’, to ‘less than’; a group of marginalised people who have been judged by the mainstream. Gay people have been discriminated against and oppressed for centuries by society and the Church, yet we are still here asserting our claim to our fair share of human dignity.

This boy, Jesus, came in a long line of prophets who acted this way and taught this stuff; that the essence of spirituality is looking out for the widow, the orphan, the poor person, the person in need, the destitute and the despairing. It’s about loving your neighbour. Any God stuff without this, is pretty vacuous. That’s what he taught later on when he grew into manhood. It seems that his brother James was one of the first to get this, and he tried to write about it and spell it out in his eponymous book.

Being a member of a minority group gives you a prophetic voice like Jesus. Minority groups don’t have the power. That’s why they’re the minority. The power rests in the mainstream and in the privileged, who protect it and resist change with all their might, sometimes even with violence of one kind or another. But you can say all kinds of stuff when you’re in a minority group. You can speak to your family, your friends, your society, your nation and offer something different. You can offer an alternative position to that of the mainstream and maybe even help to correct a great wrong You can show by your life an alternate way to live and see things. You can be prophetic, just like Jesus.

This Christmas, I welcome the birth of this boy in a shitty old barn with just his parents and a few no-bodies there to greet him, and appreciate more what the symbology around his birth, life, teaching and death mean for how we can live our lives and treat each other and make a better world. I think he really was a special boy.

Respect? Respect For What?

Aretha Franklin sang about it. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King spoke about it. We hear the word all the time. Respect. You are to show respect. You must respect your elders, respect your teachers, respect your pastor or priest, respect the Parliament, even respect your opponents.

This week has brought into stark relief the notion of respect again for me. Once again, it is over the marriage equality debate in Australia. That snail-paced item of social progress that it seems forever is just out of reach, just beyond our grasp. For the first time in history, Australia has full agreement and full support of the leaders of all our political parties. Even the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are feuding friends over marriage equality. They are in concert that Australia should allow its gay and lesbian citizens the right to marry our partners. But still, we cannot get there! It is incredibly frustrating!

We are faced now with the idiotic imbecilic situation that despite over two thirds majority of Australians consistently supporting the change, the leaders of the Parties in support of the change, the majority of Parliamentarians in support of the change, and the High Court of Australia saying that it is in the purview of the Parliament, and nowhere else, to make decisions concerning the Marriage Act, we are not able to have a free vote in the Parliament but must take the country to a monumentally expensive and divisive plebiscite on the matter, only to subsequently return to the Parliament to have the vote we're not having now.

It begs the question. Why?

It would appear that the price of the National Party's and conservative Liberal's support for Malcolm Turnbull in the recent Prime Ministerial dumping was that Turnbull inter alia hold the line on marriage equality. In other words, while he himself is totally supportive of the change and is local Member of an electorate that has one of the largest populations of LGBT people in the entire country, he has tied himself to Tony Abbott's backward and obstructionist policy; a policy that Turnbull himself spoke out against when he was still Minister of Communications before his ascension to the big office.

The plebiscite itself was Abbott's idea alone; an idea designed to impede progress of the issue while the opponents lined up and spent millions of dollars in order to attempt to stop this change from happening. For them, on the issue of marriage equality, they would wear it as a badge of honour to be the anomaly of major Western countries who have comfortably lived with their LGBT people marrying without civilisation or the Church falling into a chasm. They would comfortably and happily deprive gay and lesbian people of their right to be treated the same as everyone else and the happiness they would derive, against the clear will of the majority. These people will not hesitate.

In the Parliament yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull vomited out a whole lot sweet and saccharine statements about Australians having the ability to have a sensible conversation, to bring their collective wisdom to this, to have a respectful and open dialogue as we have the discussion over the lead up to the plebiscite. He placed much weight on the wisdom and grounded nature of Australians as the discourse would develop.

Not for me! From my experience, I've never heard so much rubbish and I think Turnbull is smart enough to know it. Have you seen the comments sections in newspaper articles and blog posts around marriage equality? Have you ever been in a Facebook thread where marriage equality is being discussed and some opponent lobs in one of the well-known hand grenades they are so fond of? Have you heard Eric Abetz talk about marriage equality? Have you heard Concetta Fierravanti-Wells tell us all that non-Anglo Australians are all opposed to marriage equality?

Have you heard what the Catholic Church still officially teaches and proffers by Australian Catholic apologists about gay people? That we are intrinsically disordered, we are  inclined to moral evil and are against the natural order. Have you heard what Lyle Shelton of the Australian Christian Lobby or Fred Nile from the Christian Democratic Party say of gay people? Here's a basic off the top of my head list of what Bible-believing [read: fundamentalist] evangelicals think about gay people. Being gay is a choice. Being gay can be changed. Being gay is not part of the identity. Being gay is a sin. It is a behaviour that can be stopped and should be repented of. It is an abomination. It is a rejection of God. It is base. It is disordered. It is anti-scriptural. Gay people will not see God nor enjoy eternity with God. God will punish gay people. Being gay itself is a punishment by God for godlessness. And if you happen to be Pentecostal, you will throw in that being gay is caused by a demon and that we are all possessed.

Now, let's go back to where I started. About respect. I understand and accept the maxim of  "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it". I understand why this is right. It is because the only logical alternative to this is epistemological coercion ie., I force you to think the way I do. Some have tried this: Fidel Castro, Lenin and Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, the Kim dynastic dictatorship of North Korea. All have attempted to coerce thinking and to enforce knowledge. A strong belief in the maxim above protects against the worst excesses of coercive thought. BUT, while I agree with the right to express thoughts freely, with the caveat that you are not expressing hate speech or inciting violence, it does not mean that I respect your views.

You can be racist. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be sexist. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be homophobic. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be a religiously motivated bigot. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.

The fact of the matter is that a plebiscite on marriage equality gives equal and equivalent weight to those who are implacably opposed to my being married to my partner of fifteen years. Can you imagine the outrage if the situation were reversed; if Australians were being asked to evaluate straight relationships to see whether we would approve socially? A plebiscite gives equal weight and moral equivalence to those who are only too willing and eager to judge me according to unscientific standards that are outdated, unjust and harmful, to those who are conservative Christians who believe that intrinsically I am a sinner, a rejecter of all that is good and encumbered by a willful opposition to the natural order only to be judged by a God who will cast me into the fires of hell for eternity for my wickedness. A plebiscite allows such as them to evaluate the morality and praxis of my relationship.

Malcolm Turnbull could not be more wrong. A Government-funded No campaign in a plebiscite will draw out the opponents of marriage equality who are not only quiet and inoffensive, but will unleash a flood of derogation of gay people by the conservatives, the crazies, the nutters and the Christians who believe we're all filthy sinners and possessed. He is deluded if he thinks otherwise.

But the right thing to do is not a matter for the democratic voice. Sorry, but it's not. Discriminating against gay people because of our sexual orientation is just wrong; no matter whether one disagrees with me or one hundred million disagree with me. Treating gay people as second class citizens will never be right. We shouldn't vote on whether racism is okay or homophobia is okay within limits or sexism is okay. They're not. And they never will be. It' s not a matter for a vote.

We should have the right to marry our partners and Turnbull should use his undoubted oratorical skills, his numbers in the Parliament, his place in the polls and his stated personal position to stand up and do the right thing and to stop being so cowardly by being frightened of the Nationals. He is looking pathetic.

I will respect anyone's right to think however they damn well please within the caveat mention above, but don't ask me to respect clearly wrong discrimination and the bigoted ugly language that goes with it.

Prime Minister Turnbull, stop being such a wus and get this to the Parliament and bring the damn thing to a vote.