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.

  

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.

A Plebiscite for Marriage Equality is Wrong

Australia has a new Prime Minister, the fifth in five years. He is a moderate of the Right; intelligent, successful, charming, articulate and a very smooth operator. Being a member of the Liberal National Coalition, he does not espouse the same values as I do. He is not of the Left. Don’t be fooled.

At the first hurdle, not 24 hours in the job, he fell. He declared that he would continue on the exact same policies on climate change and marriage equality as his predecessor. Tony Abbott saw that he was losing the battle on marriage equality, so he used the considerable power of his position, and stated to his party room that there would be a plebiscite on marriage equality. Despite one week earlier declaring that the decision belonged to the Parliament, he ‘moved the goal posts’ in a hastily called, and many of his colleagues thought ambushing joint party room meeting, and declared the decision would be delayed until six to twelve months after the next election. At the time, that meant another two years from August 2015. Now, Malcolm Turnbull has stated to the Parliament today that he will continue in this vein, despite his being supportive of marriage equality and having a huge LGBTI population in his own electorate of Wentworth. Pretty silly move, I would have thought.

So let me lay it out again. This plebiscite business. For Abbott, it was a ruse; nothing more. A strategy to forestall progress. For Turnbull, it is a placation of the conservatives in his party; the very ones he is supposed to be pulling into the twenty first century. I am not in favour of a plebiscite. And here’s why.

1. A plebiscite is only a snapshot poll of the electorate; nothing more. We already have polls on marriage equality and over the last years, they have only been going one way, no matter who the pollsters are. Support has been growing and growing, increasing year by year. It is absolutely clear. The trend is unmistakeable. We now have the ironic situation of the Coalition’s favoured pollster Crosbie Textor polling results with 72% of Australians in support and the LNP ignoring them. It is over two thirds of Australians. Name one other single issue where there is more than two thirds support. Business supports, the media supports, health associations support, sport supports, even many of the churches support and there are a majority of Christians who support. The simple unadorned fact is: we don’t need a plebiscite - we already know.
2. Plebiscites are hideously expensive. The Australian Electoral Commission has stated that a plebiscite not held concurrently with an election would cost $158 million. Imagine what we could do with $158 million. I would much rather see twenty million go to early psychosis research, thirty million to go to indigenous health, twenty million to go to MS and autoimmune disease research, twenty million to go to dementia research, twenty million to homelessness, ten million to go to drug education, ten million to go to educational services for the bush, ten million to funding shelters for domestic violence, ten million to go to anxiety and depression research, and eight million to go to obesity research, just as an example. But not to a plebiscite to tell us that over two thirds of Australians support marriage equality. We got that already.
3. We do not have a history in Australia of deciding issues by plebiscite. We have a Westminster system of responsible government and a perfectly good working parliament with members and senators we all elect to make these decisions and to show leadership. And the High Court has strongly stated that it is in the purview of the Parliament to decide on questions of marriage. We have not called a plebiscite to take Australia to war in Iraq and Afghanistan or to bomb Syria. But apparently we need one to tell us that it is okay for gay and lesbian people to marry our partners. 
4. Plebiscites are not binding. After all that effort and all that money, no-one would have to take any notice of it. The decision would still then have to go before the Parliament for a vote.
5. Most worrying, a plebiscite would let loose the crazies and the bigots and the fundamentalists who would have this question decided based on the book of Leviticus and their unstated aversion to gay and lesbian sexuality. It would be acrimonious and very very hurtful to LGBTI people. Do not think for a moment that our better angels will be released as we gently discuss marriage equality over hot cocoa. The opponents of marriage equality are cashed up and belligerent. They fill the Comments sections of articles on the topic with judgement and vitriol. They are already out there at every opportunity to stop marriage equality.
6. Marriage equality is the right thing to do regardless of the vote count in a plebiscite. Every Australian in the country could hypothetically vote against it and it still wouldn’t make that decision right. It is discrimination that stops gay people from marrying. Gay people are treated differently to other people in this respect and are not equal with our straight fellow citizens before the law. Get that: as things stand, we gay people are second-class citizens. We keep the social contract and pay our taxes but are treated unequally. This sticks in our craw and will never ever be okay, which means that this issue is here for keeps. It will never ever go away until gay and lesbian people are not discriminated against in marriage. And the converse is true for me too. If every Australian voted in favour of marriage equality, although I would be hugely chuffed, that decision would not make it right. It is right, because it is the right thing to do. Jettisoning discriminations against people in our type of Western society is the right thing to do. Treating people equally is the right thing to do. Treating people unequally is immoral.
7. The LNP would have the opportunity of framing the question. When you frame the question, you can skew it one way or the other, as did John Howard in the Republic referendum. You can say something like, “Do you agree or disagree with the notion that marriage has always been throughout history between one man and one woman and that Australia should retain this time honoured definition”? It’s not hard to do. And if there is a plebiscite, conservatives in the Government will try to do it.
8. Talking up a plebiscite as being democratic is disingenuous. It is merely a cover statement for a poorly hatched idea that was essentially borne of one of Tony Abbott’s ‘captains’ calls’. The party itself did not decide. Under new leadership with a supportive Prime Minister, one would have thought that he could have pushed for this as a first salvo into bringing his party, taken over by conservatives, back to the liberal centre of Robert Menzies and into the twenty first century. But at this first hurdle, he fell.
9. No amount of Shakespearianesque rhetoric will ever take away the fact that my relationship and that of every other gay and lesbian person in the country would, by means of a plebiscite, be offered up for evaluation and appraisal by bigots, homophobes, rednecks, religious fundamentalists and opponents of every kind, people who are implacably opposed to marriage equality. A plebiscite invites everyone to discuss the gay and lesbian community as though we are objects. A plebiscite objectifies us and opponents will not hesitate to declare that our relationships are inferior and not worthy of being admitted to the halls of the married. These people do not have the right to evaluate our relationships. If the situation were reversed, there would be marching in the streets.

So we are left with a society at large that is absolutely supportive of marriage equality, a parliament which probably already has a majority of supporters were LNP Members given a free vote. There is plenty of will in the community for change. It is only a small group of people stopping this for the whole country: conservative Liberals and Nationals in the main, many of whom themselves will have a sizable support for marriage equality in their electorates but are just refusing to budge or ignoring their constituencies. Full credit to Nationals Member for Gippsland Darren Chester who has changed his position to support for marriage equality and has overwhelming support from his electorate. He cannot be the only one. So you have to ask in the face of clear and patent broad community support, what are these LNPers actually doing apart from just being bloody-minded? Is this new shiny Prime Minister, the darling of the moderates of the Right, going to pull his party back to the centre? Or not?

With Tony Abbott gone, we have the paradoxical situation of having both a supportive Prime Minister and a supportive Leader of the Opposition and yet we still cannot get this reform through. It really is just unbelievable. Is it any wonder that people are turned off politics in this country?

I still see the choice now as being stark: a party, the ALP, who will take marriage equality as its platform to the next election and present a bill to the Parliament within one hundred days of winning the election, and a party, the LNP, many of whose Members will oppose this reform to the death and who will make the country go through a very divisive and destructive costly plebiscite six to twelve months after the next election.

Of Church and State and Marriage Equality

The Australia of the last few years has seen religious fundamentalism attempt to show its might by pushing its way to the head of the pack in political and social issues. It’s not so much radical jihadism in Australia as it is rabid evangelical fundamentalism. We’ve seen this in issues such as religious education in schools, school chaplaincy programs, occasionally abortion, and perhaps no-where more prominently than in the debate over marriage equality for gay and lesbian people. We have even seen the unedifying spectacle of leaders of Government and Opposition making the three yearly pilgrimage to the Australian Christian Lobby’s conference and spruiking a sanitised message for them in the hope they will support them publicly and thus having to offer them a platform that they believe the ACL will support; as though the ACL is the repository of all things Christian and represent the faith across Australia – which they don’t!

Whatever happened to the idea of separation of church and state? Isn’t that supposed to be enshrined in Australian public life for the good of the nation? After all, haven’t we been able to avoid most of the ugly and dangerous religious squabbles of Europe and elsewhere precisely because of this separation?

Section 116 of the Australian Constitution specifically refers to religion and allows for four tenets:

“The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth”.

It’s pretty great, isn’t it. It draws on, and outdoes I think, America’s First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. While America’s is specific in denying the right of a religion to be the ‘established’ or official religion of the land and denying the right of a government to stop people exercising their right to religious freedom, it stops there. Australia’s on the other hand goes a little further explicitly:

•       No established religion
•       No government can legislate to impose any religious observance
•       No government can legislate to prohibit the free exercise of religious observance
•       No religious test or benchmark for holding any public office.

It is therefore not uncommon to hear some say that because of these mighty four, that the separation of church and state is enshrined in our Constitution. In fact, such separation is not enshrined in the Constitution and the High Court has explicitly said so in the State Aid or Defence of Government Schools case in 1981.

Justice Sir Ronald Wilson said:

The fact is that s.116 is a denial of legislative power to the Commonwealth and no more … The provision therefore cannot answer the description of a law which guarantees within Australia the separation of church and state.

Justice Sir Ninian Stephen said s.116:

... cannot readily be viewed as a repository of some broad statement of principle concerning the separation of church and state, from which may be distilled the detailed consequences of such separation.

So, s116 is merely a “denial of legislative power”, and a welcome one, don’t get me wrong, but not a “broad statement of principle”, a fleshed out doctrine of separation of church and state. But there is a loose convention of behaviour that has been followed in Australia because of this Constitutional general attitude. And it is essential that we keep such a convention in mind when tackling social issues. I want the clergy out of people’s bedrooms and out of people’s hearts. I want adults to be free to make their own decisions about their own lives and not have to worry about breaking the law. I am not a libertarian, but in this, yes, I want small government and small church.

So why do I think s116 is a welcome statement of delimitation? Simply this. I believe that both the church and the legislature work best when they do not have jurisdiction over the other. Allow me to refine that. I like the fact that people can go to church or the mosque or the temple without fear or interference from the Government. I like the fact they can do that without having to look over their shoulder to see who’s following them. I like the fact that our successive Governments have the freedom to legislate for the common good and do not have to do so from any religious premise or any sacred text. Thus, though Fred Nile insists on calling Australia a Christian country, and does so only because of our historical connections, in fact and in law, we are not. And we shouldn’t be. We are not a Christian country in law. And we are not a Christian country in the lived experience of this multi-cultural, multi-faith secular land. There is no established religion in Australia. While Fred Nile might be an antidisestablishmentarian, I certainly am not (and I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to use that word in a serious piece of prose)!

Australia has never wanted a theocracy, a country headed up by clerics and priests. In fact, ever since the days of Samuel Marsden ‘the flogging parson’ of early colonial NSW times, we have had a distinct mistrust of the clergy and the Church. We’ve seen theocracy at work in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Clerics running the show, telling everyone what is acceptable thought and behaviour and what is not and applying penalties and punishments for infringements. Of course, the dominant religion in such countries gets to wield the power. And such religious authority finds the personal lives of its citizenry by far and away the easiest thing to target: gender, sexuality, marriage, children, and relationships. Lots of rules around this stuff. And lots of punishments because of those rules.

So, for me, Government free to govern for the common good of the nation, with the Church (or mosque or temple) free to enrich the spiritual lives of people is the best way to go. That’s not to say that I think either are necessarily doing a great job. I don’t. Both government and church could really lift their game. However, there are two exceptions for me concerning this necessary separation; one where I think Government should step in to the religious life of a nation, and the other, where religion should step in and have a say about governance.

The first is in the matter of religious coercion. This can be either overt or covert. It can be socially approved and wrapped in sacralised language or it can be secretive and very nasty. I am thinking here of cults. I think there is a place for removing children from some of these groups, and maybe even some adults in certain cases. No ‘right’ of freedom of religious observance should protect adults indoctrinating kids into harmful belief and practice. Removals have been done, eg., in 1987, six children were removed from the cult The Family in Lake Eildon Victoria, and more recently in 2012, twelve children were removed from an incestuous religious cult in rural NSW. No religion, I don’t care what it is, should have the freedom to harm people or coerce people to remain observant for fear of leaving. If there is physical or psychological harm visited upon adherents, there is a place for Government and its law enforcement agencies. Such coercive behaviour is not even remotely authentic spirituality.

The second caveat I mentioned above is when Governments are out of step with ethical considerations, where people are glossed over or ignored and legislation with the bottom line becomes the dominating factor, eg., environmental concerns. Recently, we have seen religion speak truth to power: Pope Francis on the world stage calling for a halt to unfettered capitalism and industrialisation to the detriment of the planet in his call to world action on climate change, and more locally, we have seen here both Christian and Moslem clerics call for serious action on climate change to the present Federal Government in Australia. We have also heard the Churches speak up about indigenous rights and mental health programs for example. And so they should.

And so to the issue of the moment. Marriage equality in Australia is the big issue right now where the maintenance of separation of church and state is crucial. Perhaps no other factor has caused the LGBTI community so much distress and pain as the Christian Church. The Church in Australia is a diverse group. It is certainly not a homogeneous entity with one set of beliefs and praxis. Rather, it is a multitude of beliefs around the centrality of Christ as well as huge differences in style and structure of liturgy.

However, one section of this group is the loudest and the most strident, and for me as a result of what I see as arrogance, the most objectionable. In their everyday vernacular, they would call themselves ‘Bible-believing Christians’ but others would call them ‘evangelical* fundamentalists’, a group that represents for me now, all that is wrong with religion. With an emphasis on a sola scriptura model of Scripture that is virtually Bibliolatry and a model of interpretation that is essentially face-value, literalist, conservative, rejecting of scholarship that differs from their traditional view, with a focus on a few sacred cows, plus a willingness to use it as a weapon against dissenters, and all this favoured over any sense of human lived experience, this crowd in times past were the ‘holy rollers’, the ‘God-botherers’, the ‘Bible bashers’ and Australians have traditionally steered well clear of them.

There is absolutely no truth other than their truth about all matters and especially it would seem, about gay sexuality. They are not just oppositional to marriage equality but belligerently so. I have come to conclude after engaging them over the last few years on matters gay that they trichotomise the world, ie., they divide it into three groups: real Christians (them), false fake Christians (others who profess Christian spirituality but not according to their model) and the unsaved (ever other human being in the world that lives or who has ever lived or who will ever live who doesn’t have a particular kind of salvation experience). And there is no budging them from this. They will go down with the ship on this one. Jesus himself could appear before them and say, “hey guys, you haven’t quite got it right” and they wouldn’t listen. They are so rusted on to this model which has the Bible as their single and only argument that they appear to me to be totally lacking any insight as to how ridiculous, how absurd, how offensive, how rude, and how arrogant they usually sound.

So their view of gay marriage? Totally and completely against it and always will be. Hell will freeze over before they give a millimetre on this. They will never agree to marriage equality because they will never ever accept gay sexuality as being a valid life. Let me repeat what I have oft repeated elsewhere. For them, a gay sexuality is unequivocally and without the slightest shred of doubt: a sin, a rejection of God, a repudiation of all things Godly and holy, selfish, indulgent, against the order of nature and a punishment by God and deserving of eternal punishment, “for such as these will not inherit the Kingdom of God”, a choice and a reprehensible lifestyle. And because of this, they see our relationships as counterfeit, not real love, fake, based in lust or deviancy and therefore, totally inferior to straight relationhips. They will quote you chapter and verse to prove every word they say. They will also ignore every argument against this model because of their Bible and the way they see it. They will ignore all science, all psychology, all biology, all genetics, all anthropology, all sociology, all history, all scholarship. Its’ just the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible.

So when we talk about a plebiscite for all Australians to decide whether to continue discrimination or not over marriage equality, ie., to treat one group of Australians differently before the law compared to the rest of Australia, I don’t feel at all comfortable in knowing that evangelical fundamentalists get to have a say about the nature and quality of my relationship and those of every other gay person in the land. It’s like asking Kim Jong Un if he feels that South Koreans need a bit more support in their defence capabilities. Why would you ask a sworn enemy of LGBTI people to decide our fate? I think it is wrong. And unjust. And blurring the convention of separation of church and state.

The marriage equality debate in Australia is a fair debate and I don’t even mind having a robust argument with opponents. But let’s not do that on religious grounds. This is not a religious question, despite fundamentalists declaring that it is. Half of them believe it is a demonic force having its sway over the land and inviting the judgment of God. Seriously. I actually mean it. But no, we are not talking about religious ceremonies or religious observance being effected in any way. We are talking about gay people having the right to marry their partner in an authorised civil ceremony, as do 70% of heterosexual Australians right now, and having their duly solemnised relationship affirmed by society represented by their family and friends. That’s all. That’s it. It’s hardly the apocalypse.

The religionists can do what they like in their churches. But I do think that we will see the day when some churches, not all, will be happy to marry people in their beautiful buildings too in the future. Some will, some won’t. And some gay people would love that, and some gay people wouldn’t darken the doorway of a church after our treatment by traditional Christianity. And I wouldn’t blame them for a moment. But gays getting married in churches is not what is being proposed here.

I still think the Parliament is the place for this decision. A plebiscite will be an open invitation to the fundamentalists to pour all over this with their objections to gay people. It is just bigotry. And wow, have you noticed how much they don’t like being called bigots? They do not like being called out. But yes it is bigotry; nothing less. Religious bigotry. And it is homophobia too in many cases. As a society, we have realised that racism and sexism are to be deplored and we all as one work to ensure they do not occur. No religious person is tolerated offering religious rationales for racism or bigotry. That time is gone. It is totally unacceptable. I think it is high time we moved onto treating homophobia in the same manner. It is just not acceptable in the twenty first century with what we now know about human sexuality, and gay sexuality in particular, to tolerate homophobic ‘authoritative’ statements by anyone, be they pastor or priest.

The proposal for marriage equality in Australia is not a religious issue. It is a civil issue and a human rights issue, whose institution should be decided by the Parliament. We should adhere to the convention of the separation of church and state in this matter; a convention that has served us well, and not allow fundamentalist Christians to highjack the decision or to steer it in any meaningful way. Their myopic impoverished spirituality has its place in their churches and their study groups and in their own personal lives but has no place in deciding the outcome of how this nation decides to organise itself with regard to its gay and lesbian tax-paying citizens and how their relationships are to be recognised. I trust the good sense of the Australian people to continue to eschew such stupidity.

*I do not mean by this that all evangelicals are fundamentalists. Clearly, they are not. I know plenty of evangelical people with whom I may no longer hold the same model of scripture, but who I regard as kind and loving people and sophisticated thinkers. So this paper is not referring to such as them.

Some Levity

To lighten the tone after that, I include a Letter to The Editor of the Newcastle Herald by a former friend of mine who told me I was ‘a false teacher’ and that ‘better had there been a millstone tied around my neck and I be cast into the sea rather than I lead anyone astray’ which is precisely what he thought I was doing. Last week, Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy interviewed me about the local bishops’ response to marriage equality (surprisingly not bad for senior clerics) and he wrote the letter in response. It is the usual stuff, devoid of anything remotely sophisticated. I didn’t know that even ‘etc’ is sinful and wrong, but apparently it is. It also peddles out the fear mongering at the end (fundamentalists love ratcheting up the fear and retribution dial) with a vengeful angry God judging our nation ‘to its peril’ should we allow marriage equality. But it also had a hilarious response in the Comments section that I just could not ignore. Whoever you are Sarcastic Sam, thank you for your contribution.

JOANNE McCarthy declares she is annoyed that a marriage celebrant is required by our law to say, “marriage is the union of a man and a woman” (‘‘My wedding checklist’’ Herald 15/8). 

However, I believe God will be happy with these words, because this is how he designed marriage to be.   According to my beliefs, God invented sex.  He therefore has the right to write the rules under which we should enjoy it, and he has done. 

For one thing, he makes it abundantly clear in his book, the Bible, that he opposes homosexual acts.  

If our law allowed marriage of a man to a man, or a woman to a woman, it would be condoning homosexual acts and therefore be at conflict with God. 

Homosexual acts, along with adultery, gossip, greed, hate, lust, lying, pride, etc, are all wrong, primarily because God has decreed it to be so.  

I believe setting the rules is God’s exclusive right, not ours, and any nation that changes them does so at its peril.  

Sarcastic Sam 

Very well written Frank. This is easily the most lucid, compelling and sensible argument against same sex marriage I have read. There is simply no counter argument to the facts and sound logic you have presented. Let's see those crazy gay marriage advocates try and dismantle this substantial argument. I think it's game, set and match to you on this one. I can't think of any plausible debate against the opinion you have put forward. Well done.